Citizen 283 Coradis

Coradis grumbled as she readjusted her pack. Go into a cave, get some minerals to color your glasswork, and return to the temple to make your canes. A simple enough task in theory of course, except her instructors didn't give any directions. How in the elders' names did they expect her to know where caves were, let alone where to find caves with the correct minerals?

She had asked them after class of course, since she came from such a small village so far away,  if they could give her any directions? But her instructors had only laughed at her, citing the location of such materials was ‘protected information’, similar to how many older rexes would hide the location of mushrooms so no other rex could collect from ‘their’ sites. It wasn't as if the other students were any more forthcoming either, although they were more direct about their greed. Why would they help a student who was only able to attend lessons every few months? No, better to keep that knowledge for themselves and the others who lived their craft, not some weekender.

She had spent hours traipsing through trade halls and markets, even considering just buying the materials from someone who had them, but the prices they were asking for were simply outrageous, and Coradis had quickly come to the conclusion she was going to have to just start poking around… Or trail all the way home with nothing to work on this month.

Without any direction, Cora simply picked a direction at random, striding off with a pickax strapped to her full travel kit. There was no way she was leaving any of her supplies to be picked over by those vultures back in Altis. No, if she was to lose any of her possessions, it would damn well be her own fault, thank you.

It had only been a few hours when she found the first suspicious hole in the ground, slanting nearly sideways into the side of a hill, as if some great beast had raked a single claw against the base of the hillside, unearthing soil, mud and rusty black stones. The gap wasn't very wide, perhaps just big enough for her to crawl through on her belly, but after a bit of hemming and hawing, Cora lit her magic and stuck her large head into the crack and took a large sniff. The pungent smell of rusted metal and stale water slammed through her nose.

Sputtering, Cora scrambled away from the crack, her ears pinned back. Well there was certainly metal in there, but was she really willing to go deep enough to find it? And where was the smell of water coming from? Was the gap big enough for her to get through? There were too many unknowns, this was ridiculously unsafe. Coradis felt like crying, looking at the curved crack in the earth, it almost seemed like the hillside was taunting her, as if Chryseis himself was taunting her. Daring her to see if she truly was dedicated enough to her craft to risk such a dangerous cavern to collect what she needed.

Cora’s lip curled as she snarled at the hillside, stalking back and forth along the crack as she thought. There was… some point to using her magic to attempt to chip away at the walls from the outside, but without being able to see what she was doing properly, she was more likely to just lose her pick. There was no way around it. With a snarl, Cora chucked her bag into the bushes so it wouldnt be stolen, and sent a burst of her magic up into the sky as her mother had taught her. A brilliant spark of yellow sprang obediently from her halo, spiraling into the sky before blooming into a shower of glinting sparks that could be seen by any rexal nearby. At least this way if she got trapped, someone would be able to find her. She wasn't so far from the city no one would see it and recognize one of Canto's teachings.

The scramble into the crack actually wasn't as hard as Coradis expected, but she pushed herself deeper as fast as she could, her eyes screwed up from the overwhelming scents of the cave. Find something red or silver, extract a piece, and leave. That was her only goal. Several pockets of red and silver were not so deep into the crack, only about double her length inside.

She had nearly reached them when she felt it, the shift in the stones below her that she wasnt in control of. Coradis’s ears pinned in panic as a sharp cracking noise reverberated through the cavern, before the ground fell out from under her, and everything went black in a sea of sound and stone.

AUTHOR: Babykitten