Dangerous Dig Dug

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Balthazar Black
Approved Character
Posts: 2107
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2019 1:15 am
Race: Human
Profession: Leader of The Black Cats
Renown: 1815
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Wealth Tier: Tier 5

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Dangerous Dig Dug


85 Ashan 722
It was exactly where the geologist had told him it would be when he sent the man back down the mountain path. Balthazar walked alone up the Syper for about a bit and a half before he saw the tents of the abandoned camp poking out over a few rocks. His pace quickened and any signs of exhaustion from the hike faded as he rounded the path into the abandoned camp. An unpleasant odor rushed Balthazar's senses when he reached the flat area that the tents had been set up in. There were crates full of different, broken up rocks lying around the camp. Likely the miner's haul from before the collapse. At the far end of the camp, Balthazar could see where land had caved in from above and crushed the supports forming the entrance to the mine.

As he moved through the camp towards the collapsed entryway, he could help but hope it was only the entrance that caved in. The odds of survival for the miners were better if it was just the entrance but the one who had escaped and made it back to the camp reported a total collapse. A room and pillar mine where the pillar collapsed would have brought everything down on top of them. In that case the best hope would be that some of the rocks which had collapsed were stacked on each other in a way that gave the miners enough space not to get turned to mush. There was an easy way to find out but something stopped Balthazar between the entrance to the camp and the collapsed entrance to the mine.

It was the call of the earth. The magic was a complicated thing. The elements were his friends, not his tools. They knew what he wanted and pointed him in the direction with loud and subtle hints. He could feel something in the rocks sitting in barrels waiting to be refined and transported away. It was not earth. It was not the element he could manipulate. Curiosity drove him off of his direct path to the collapse and brought him over to a cart full of decently sized chunks of rock. He slowly held out his hand over the rocks and listened more closely to the call. It was ore. He could tell from the way the rocks spoke to him and from the visual cues. He'd read about identifying ore prior to coming up the the mountain and he could not forget what he had read.

Was this the metal he was looking for? He could take it now and go. He didn't need to help the University. He had what he wanted right there in front of him and no one would know. No one would know.

Fuego would know. That alone was almost enough to banish the thought from Balthazar's mind. He had come to the collapse to save lives, not get the metal. But you came to the mountain for the metal.

There were better ways to get it than to steal it. Still, why waste an opportunity. He wasn't exactly stealing it if he just attuned to it. He could have picked up any individual rock from the pile and attuned to it specifically but it would have taken more time than attuning to the mass in the barrel. He had the experience he needed to attune to and quickly sort through the notes with almost as much accuracy as if he had picked up one and focused on it. Every rock in the pile had it's own unique frequency but the notes were not as unique as they were in a person. Like the material that sang, the notes were rigid and absolute. Stone and solid. He was not familiar with the names of what he was looking for but as he focused he was able to isolate the strange and unfamiliar notes from the ones he knew.

He focused on those strange sounds. Listening to and meditating on what they were. Isolating. Ignoring every other noise so he could understand the note in his mind. There were a few notes he had not encountered before but he worked through them each individually over what couldn't have been more than a few bits. His practice with mediation made him very good at this part of Attunement. Familiar notes like the notes of violence that were left behind by the cruel breaking of the earth tried to distract the mage, but he kept his focus on the notes that sang like different tuning forks. Two notes that when divided apart and focused on separately, revealed themselves to the mage. Iron and Copper. Familiar, basic, plain metals. Nothing like what they were rumored to have found.

The metal was not in that pile at the least.

He cleared his head and proceeded to the collapsed entryway to the mine. As he got closer, the odor in the air grew more pungent. His nose crinkled slightly in response to the increasingly nasty smell but he ignored it for the time being. It wasn't the same as the smell of a decaying dead body. It was something else. Something polluting the wind around him. He placed his hands on the land that had slid over the opening and closed his eyes. One breath, two breaths, and he pushed his senses beyond the fallen entryway.

There was good news and there was bad news. The good news was that it seemed the miner who escaped had been wrong about the collapse. It was not the entire mine that collapsed, just the supports that had held up the entryway which failed. Probably due to the weather. Likely due to the weather. Since the whole mine had not caved in, Balthazar could sense an opening a short distance into the mine and inside it, the vague forms of the mining team. That was where the bad news began. He could feel their forms in the opening through omnivision, but they were all prone on the ground or sat up against walls. He couldn't tell whether or not they were breathing, but he had a good idea what it was he was smelling.

Gas.

Probably a natural gas that had been in the mountain? Did mountains have gas? Balthazar had read about the dangers involved with mining but he had not learned about the potential for natural gasses to leak. He read mostly about the ways to prevent your mine from collapsing around you. Ironic. Was it flammable? Balthazar knew enough about the sciences that he knew to be concerned about it being flammable. If he could find a way to capture it he might even have attempted to use it to make explosives but he wasn't sure how to capture it. Given the miners were trapped in the earth with little air to breath other than the gas, it didn't matter for the time being.

Crow. Go to Robin and the geologist. Have them get the members of the Order from the camp. I can't help them other than getting them out. Balthazar looked up at the diri of death flying above him. The spirit said nothing. It circled in the air a few more times and then went off towards the squire's last location. Robin would know what it meant- or at least he'd be able to figure it out.

Balthazar had to handle this carefully. If he didn't soothe his defiance spark there was always a risk of him emitting a spark that could cause the gas to explode. If he made a portal the flames that lined it might do the same. If he hurled a bolt of lightning into a narrow opening to teleport to the miners, he would certainly set it off. He needed to manipulate the earth, but he needed to soothe his defiance spark as well. He could do both, but it would make his control of the magic weaker. Fortunately he could manipulate all four elements at once and he only needed to manipulate one now. Weakened magic would work. Might even keep him from pushing himself too far.

He reached inward and soothed his defiance spark as he had done many times in the past. He felt the static slowly fade around him and the heat in his blood subside. It was always one of the more physical shifts. Not quite as shocking as soothing his Rupturing spark was though. With his mutations and the hazard they could present soothed, Balthazar took a few steps back from the fallen entryway and held his hands out towards it. He could have embraced the earth and swam through it, but he needed to clear it out if he wanted the miners to be able get out. How did he want to do it? It would be harder to move everyone back down the mountain than it would be to move the earth to help them but he was still trying to figure out what would require him to use the least magic.

His spark urged him to do the most. Split the mountain, open it wide for the miners. He knew better from experience and had the presence of mind after arcs of resisting the influence of his sparks. He could do the job with a much more moderate display. He took a deep breath and called out to the rubble-filled earth entrapping the miners. Please move. Casting spells in Defiance, as the mundane who studied it might have called the act, was always a conversation with the element rather and a stiff imposition of the mage's will. That was why larger acts were possible as you mastered the spark, but they took time. Convincing the elements to act against their nature took time but Balthazar was willing to wait.

Please move. He asked the earth once more as he began dragging his arms through the air as if pulling aside a heavy curtain. His arms would move through the motion and slowly circle back to the start to perform the motion all over again. The earth on the right side of the collapse, the side where Balthazar's hands began the motion, began to tremble a little in response to the mage's prodding. The trembling grew but it did not stretch deeper into the cave because the earth knew what the defier was looking to do. They understood each other in the strange way that only the mages could know. Slowly but surely, the stones trapping the miners began to peel backwards, creating a small opening that would grow more with each moment.

As soon as there was a hole for air to get into the mine, Balthazar's theory about the gas was confirmed. The stench grew five times worse as soon as the mine was pried open and it only got worse as more of the earth rolled back out of the way. Within ten bits, Balthzar had peeled open the mine which would have taken a mundane crew breaks to open up at the least. Magic was extraordinary, but it was not magic alone that helped him achieve this task. He knew enough about construction and engineering to guide the earth in a way that kept the mine from collapsing again. With time and ether, the earth was persuaded into submission. The collapsed entryway cleared and the fowl smelling gas filled the whole campsite. Sometimes Balthazar wished his senses were not so keen. Maybe then he wouldn't have been so repelled by the smell.

Despite his aversion to the odor, Balthazar wasted little time going into the entrance he had just created in for the mine. He pulled his shirt up over his nose to give himself some small relief from the smell but when he began dragging the unconscious miners from the pit they'd trapped themselves in it fell and he had to endure the smell. After dragging the first two out, Balthazar began to understand why they were unconscious. The gas, whatever it was, was affecting him too. His breaths were deeper than they should have been because of the physical strain that dragging the miners put him under.

He stopped outside and went through the side pockets of his enchanted bag, looking for one of the trinkets he'd brought with him for just this sort of problem. He pulled a necklace of glass beads from his bag and slowly put it on over his head. He knew how they worked but was not used to using them yet. He took a deep breath and as he breathed out, the necklace activated. The wind began to circle around Balthazar's head as a bubble of clean and breathable air was formed. He could venture into the mine without fear of whatever was leaking now. The mage went back into the mine and continued pulling the miners out. Once they'd all been dragged a safe distance from their workplace, Balthazar sat down on a rock to catch his breath. One bit of sitting turned into two and two into three until the mage fell into a small, restful breathing pattern.

They're getting up. Fuego's voice spoke into Balthazar's mind. The mage took one last deep breath and opened his eyes, looking up at the sky for a few trills before slowly standing up. The magic in his necklace had worn off by that time but a strong breeze had begun to blow over the mountain, further spreading the smell and thinning out the gas. Fuego's report was right, some of the miners had regained consciousness but they all seemed to be dealing with some nausea. Only some of them though. Others still hadn't woken.

CAW! Balthazar would have been startled by the arrival of his other diri if he wasn't so physically tired. He turned his head to the crow sitting on a rock beside the path down the mountain where Robin, the geologist, and a team of the Order of Adunih healers were making their way up the mountain.

Good bird. Balthazar thought to the diri with a small smile before rising to go and address the team who would help the miners recover. His part was done. He had freed them from the mountain. Now he wanted to rest.


word count: 2417

Visible Mutations/ Marks

Mutations
Defiance: Skin always glows faintly and he is warm to the touch. His is also the center of a field of static electricity so people get shocked touching him on occasion.
Rupturing: Orange etheric cracks spider-web up his arms to his elbows. His eyes and the glowing cracks going down his cheeks glow dark blue.
Transmutation: He has a series of emerald, glowing cracks on his right pectoral.
Marks
Bellinos: His fingernails are always black. The color fades into his fingers.
Celarion: A dim glowing ring surrounds his left forearm.
Palenon: A silver lightning shaped mark about the size of a hand stretching up towards his torso.

Scars

  • Oops, Oops, Ouch: Balthazar Black has twenty scars across his back from a lashing as well as scars on his hands and arms from jagged rocks on Faldrass. There are two scars on the sides of his abdomen from being stabbed and a slash across his back which blends in with the whip scars.

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