Fake White left Oriena and the runt behind, disappearing around the corner that the runt had initially pulled them inside to issue his warning. Fake White didn't give a flying fuck about the kid, but Jaxen was intrigued. There were more important things to do than fish the secrets out of some Atharim runt, though. Besides, Oriena had him in her clutches. Poor kid was unlikely to survive the encounter.
He passed a pair of regular Atharim in the hall. Both men gave him a curt nod as they came in arm's reach, but Fake White didn't fail to notice how they stepped ever so slightly aside to allow him through.
Damn. White had a reputation. The guy was scary as shit. No wonder.
The paper-thin mini-Wallet was tucked safely away inside his jacket, bearing the files he had managed to copy. Like always, only the rare and unique were the most valuable items in the world. That had been the extent of his interest in history: sweeping museums for anything that caught his eye. Like Maximilian's sword. That thing was gaudy as hell. He was sad it was gone. It took a shit ton of work to swipe it in the first place.
But now, his mind itched to research the things he briefly saw in the files. Like that Sword of Light. Apparently he was into swords. Who knew?
He recalled his first attempt to breech a bank vault. At the time he had no interest in the money or safety deposit boxes inside. It had been about practice. Vaults dated back to the times of the Egyptians, and surprisingly, the older ones were sometimes harder to penetrate than the newer ones. Modern day vaults depended on biometrics, electronics, circuits and servers. Things that could break down. But it took more than deft fingers and a quick mind to hack your way through a meter of steel-door, or drill through steel reinforced concrete walls. Entire buildings were renovated around those old vaults simply because they couldn't be destroyed. They'd probably outlast nuclear war.
So Jaxen didn't know if the Atharim had such a vault or whether it would be ancient or modern. But he knew what to look for. The walls surrounding vaults had to be reinforced to accommodate the weight of the structure. The typical wooden studs of a framing would be interrupted. Seams in the drywall were ever so subtly visible, if only by the way the paint dried differently at the interface.
In either case, he quickly found the entrance to a rather intriguing room. Nobody guarded the exterior, so he quickly checked the handle. Locked. meaning the Atharim relied on brute strength or modern technology to keep unwanted guests out.
Fake White seized a thread of power, warping fire and earth into a drill that penetrated the door. He stood there apparently studying the door for defects while Jaxen's mind worked to dismantle the interior mechanism. A ghost of a smile touched his lips when he heard a click.
He pushed the door open and closed it behind him inside.
He was in some sort of armory. Interesting room. Guns, edged weapons, shit he had no idea what they did were displayed, many behind glass cases. He had no interest in weapons, although some of the swords looked bad ass. Instead, he pulled the mini Wallet and snapped a quick video of the room's contents. If the Atharim were preparing for war, Jaxen found their war room. No sense in letting it go undocumented. He put the mini Wallet away.
He quickly walked the room's interior, searching for the signs of vault panels behind the walls. That was when he saw the vaguest scraping along the edge of one weapon's glass case that indicated it had been moved back and forth on occasion.
It was easy to shove aside, and when he did, he smiled at the door of a safe embedded in the wall behind.
The best way to breech a vault, or safe, was a powerful tool called a "burning bar" or "thermic torch." It burned liquid oxygen like a torch, but much much hotter than the typical hardware store acetylene torch. The thief makes a series of small holes that can eventually be linked to form a gap used to disable the interior mechanisms.
Jaxen didn't have such a torch on him, but he had something far better. Fire, pure molten fire stabbed the metal, superheating it bright red. The heat of it beaded sweat in Fake White's face. But a couple minutes later, three bore holes opened into the door interior. After that, it was a simple matter of destroying the mechanism with ropes of earth and fire to unlock it.
He smiled victoriously as the door swung free, but the smile was short lived, replaced with disappointment.
No shiny baubles. No interesting code books. Just a pile of rocks, which he moved aside with one arm, toppling them over. There was a stack of old coins. Probably valuable, but Jaxen didn't care about antiques some grandma might collect. There was a folded piece of parchment, but he didn't recognize the language. Some kind of tablet that he shoved aside. And a piece of tusk that reminded him of the narwhal staff taken from his apartment. That thing had been cool. It had been taken from the same museum that once housed the Archduke's sword. All these carvings had been inlaid in it. Kind of like the scrimshaw that Manix sought.
Scrimshaw.
He pulled the flute of tusk out and looked it over more carefully. Shapes were carved into it now that he looked, so worn down as to be barely visible. They looked like letters, or hieroglyphs maybe, trunks, hooks, branches and tent shapes. Two columns of shapes were etched side by side, almost like a cipher.
One shape caught his eye, and he laid his fingers across it carefully. It was the shape of an X laid centered across a square turned on one corner like a diamond.
The shape made him smile, but he didn't know why.
Not shapes, though, maybe runes.
He licked his lips and tucked the tusk inside his jacket. It was much smaller than the firearm and draw no attention to its presence.
Just for good measure he took another picture of the safe's contents, and grabbed one of the rocks, which was more of a pebble anyway, and deposited it in a pocket.
He closed the door and shoved the glass case back in place. Nobody would know the safe had been disturbed until they next went to open it and find the pilot holes.
He slipped back into the hall, careful to not let anyone see him emerge from the armory, and went in search of more goodies.
He found a woman sitting outside what appeared to be an office. It would be no problem at all to tie her up and toss her inside while he browsed at his leisure, but commotion echoed from the distance, and Jaxen knew it was time to go.
He had no idea what happened to Oriena. And he would prefer they leave together, but he was sure she'd save herself if she had to. Just like Jaxen would too.
He made for the elevator without sparing the two guards so much as a second glance. But as he waited for the elevator to open, he saw movement in the reflection of the door panels.
He grabbed the power, ready to bind them down with ropes of air as Tarin had done to him, and turned.
But the man had only gotten up to go to the bathroom. Fake White smirked at the remaining man and got on the elevator.
Thirty seconds later, he walked out of the building without so much as having to tie anyone up. It was almost disappointing how easy it was.
The sun had set by then. But the city was never dark nor empty. Jaxen took the first opportunity he had to remove Fake White from his face about half a mile away from Baccarat.
Still no Oriena, but he was dying to see the monument made by the Ascendancy. Just as he turned into the clearing of the Red Square, an ambulance was leaving the Kremlin gates.
He frowned and decided to return later. For now, he wanted to get back to Manix's brownstone.
He'd call Oriena later. If she was still alive. But he didn't doubt her for a second.
Edited by
Jaxen Marveet, Feb 3 2018, 09:57 PM.
![[Image: orianderis.jpg]](http://thefirstage.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/orianderis.jpg)
