[center][h1][url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5157586][color=MediumAquamarine]Arin von Astastel[/color][/url][/h1][/center]
The travel to Timberholde was surprisingly uneventful. Whether it was thanks to the rain that was so cold it could suck the enthusiasm out of any would-be attackers, Vuthaternock’s ever-elusive wyvern ally, or plain luck, Arin didn’t know. He was just thankful that the group’s time in the rain was kept to a minimum.

After drying himself off at the inn, Arin spent some time warming his body with a hot cup of tea, cherishing the heat provided by the fire in the fireplace. As much as he wanted to stay there until bedtime, he knew that that was not possible. In fact, it was unlikely he was going to sleep tonight. Not with the amount of work he had to do.

With the permission of the innkeeper, Arin borrowed a corner of the kitchen, including the kitchen appliances, transforming it into a makeshift laboratory. For the next several hours, Arin remained in the kitchen, analyzing the samples he gathered during his brief time at the castle’s vaults.

The process itself was simple enough but was tedious even at the best of times. First, he removed all contaminants from each sample. Once finished, the sample’s magical energy was condensed and crystallized. Arin used the crystallized magic to study the spells in further detail. Based on their characteristics, he cross-checked the notes he took of the vault and the list of authorized spells he was given to find whether or not there was an outlier.

There was none.

Arin rubbed his eyes. No unauthorized magic was used in the theft, at least not the ones involving the vaults. This strengthened the hypothesis that the thief knew about the authorized magic and used it to gain entry. Though, there was still the possibility that the thief waltzed in from a secret passage that not even its current residents knew about, making the royal vault less of a vault and more of a glorified treasury with an open backdoor. Either way, the thief had knowledge that only a few knew about.

[quote=@pinkkoala321]"Bodies? No. Missing family . . .? Well, he's not a second cousin, but he has been gone for quite some time." She rolls her head. "Callin always was a studious one. He much prefers the pursuit of knowledge to running a kingdom." Rynn snorts and toys with the end of her braid. "Not that I blame him. Why waste his time in such a dirty, decrepit place when he could see the world?" She shrugged. "But I couldn't imagine leaving father and mother. They're much too old to have another heir."
[/quote]
Arin’s fingers moved away from his eyes as he looked down at a particular crystallized sample. It was the sample he obtained from the “keyhole” of the vault, one of the last samples he got during the vault examination. The guards didn’t question him when he collected it because the elf managed to annoy them enough by that point that they didn’t think to stop him from collecting essentially what was the key to the vault. Arin had no intention of using it to gain access to the vaults unsupervised and only took it to see if unauthorized magic tampered with the mechanism of the vault, though that turned out not to be the case.

If the thief did use authorized magic to access the vault, that meant they had the blood to do so, whether it was from their own veins or “borrowed” from someone else.

Arin picked up the sample, fidgeting with it until an idea popped into his head. His original plan to track down the one who used unauthorized magic to break into the vaults might have been thrown out the window, but that did not mean he couldn’t use some variation of it. All he had to do was imbue the concentrated magical essence into an item that he could alter to serve as a detector. Arin could make it so that the item would respond to the blood of individuals who recently opened the vault door.

He would need to eliminate Rynn’s essence from the item to prevent it from responding to her continuously, but if this went as planned, the next time the item responds it should be to the owner of the blood or a container filled with the blood used to open the vault. The plan wouldn't have worked effectively if the group stayed at the castle, but out here ---far from the cluster of people who Arin knew can open the door--- if there was someone who can open the door legitimately, the item would tell him. If not, the blood used to open the vault can be narrowed down to the residents of the castle, Rynn included. [color=MediumAquamarine][i]Assuming that the thief still remains in Ovyadell or the Underground... Or if there is enough blood left for the item to respond to, but I suppose it is worth a try.[/i][/color]

Arin started to rummage through his belongings to find a suitable item.