"You'll get used to it, dear." Jirni said, trying to ease her daughter's mind after seeing how pale Phloria had become. "I have the same problem with Kamila. The poor woman pukes and cries a lot when we run into certain types of crimes, but she's getting stronger for it.
"I'll tell you the same thing I told her. Don't bottle up, your feelings, otherwise one of these days you will snap. Find someone you trust and share your burden with them, as I do with your father.
"You could talk to Quylla…"
"No way. She's already got a lot on her plate. I don't think she could handle the pressure of knowing how conflicted I am about this mission. She needs to believe that whatever happens, I'll be there to protect her." Phloria said.
"Then you could talk to Lith." Jirni 'casually' suggested, as if it hadn't been her goal from the beginning.
"In the lost cities, he has faced worse things than some human experimentation. It would be a perfect opportunity for you two to reconnect after avoiding each other for so long. Is Lith still airtight or has he finally opened up to you?"
"Nothing has changed." Phloria's reply came out too fast to be believable.
"That's good to hear." Jirni said, as if Phloria had told her the opposite.
"Yet don't get carried away. He still has a girlfriend and one should never overestimate the feelings that constantly being together in a life or death situation can induce. They die as fast as they are born, so tread with caution."
"Mom, I'm not going to discuss that part of my life with you!" The sudden blood rush to her face told Jirni that something was indeed happening.
"Sure, dear. Do you mind passing the communicator to Quylla? I would like to cheer her up too. If you call me again in six hours, you would have the opportunity to talk with your father."
While Jirni talked with her daughters, Kamila used her civilian amulet to inform Lith's family about his well-being. Hearing about it from Berion never meant much to them.
He could only tell them that he was alive and on a mission, which they already knew simply by looking at Lith's rune on their amulets. When someone died, their imprint on a magical item disappeared and so would their communication rune.
Kamila, instead, told them how he looked well-fed, in perfect health, and even in his normal spirits, so the mission couldn't be that bad.
Since they had finished early, Jirni and Kamila could go back home for lunch instead of eating in a local restaurant.
'Gods, I've always heard that Constables have to watch their backs, but we have so many soldiers in our detail that the only threat is that to my figure.' Kamila thought.
'Long hours sitting behind a desk, delicious meals, and then when I get back home, I'm too tired to exercise. How the heck does Lady Ernas keep her hourglass figure with our line of work?'
To make matters worse, the lunch at the Ernas House was always a full course meal, so Kamila would end up eating more than at any restaurant to not offend her hosts.
"I'm glad that Lith is with our baby girls. Those Odi gave madness a whole new definition." Orion said. "Their Forgemastering experiments were as cruel as insane. The expedition members are lucky to have faced only faulty projects, otherwise they would have probably died."
At those words, Kamila became pale, whereas Jirni's curiosity was piqued.
"How do you know what they have faced? There has been no report." She asked.
"When he called Kamila, his amulet sent all the data they have collected in encrypted mode to the research division and I'm a Royal Forgemaster, dear. You'll read my report once I'm done writing it, but I can spoiler you some things."
"Please do." Jirni nodded for him to continue.
"From what I have seen, everything we heard about the lost Odi civilization was an understatement. The ruins they are at must belong to the period immediately preceding their fall…"
"Do you want me to leave?" Kamila said.
On one hand, she had no idea if her clearance level allowed her to hear such conversation, nor if she was capable of bearing it. On the other hand, she was dying to know what was happening to Lith.
"There's no need for such a thing, dear. We are in the same boat, both at work and for the pinch our loved ones are into. You deserve to know." Jirni said while holding Kamila's hand.
'Gods, I wish my mother was such a good, sensitive person. Appearances are indeed deceiving. When I first met Lady Ernas, I thought she was a monster.' Kamila thought, moved by Jirni's kindness.
'Gods, my wife is a monster. She's playing that poor woman like a fiddle.' Orion thought.
'I still don't understand why Lieutenant Yehval now practically lives in our home, but if I know one thing for sure: by having Kamila listening to these kinds of things, Jirni is hastening the development of Lith's relationship. They will either break up or get serious soon.'
"What were you saying about the Odi, dear?" Jirni asked.
"That their experiments were a perfect blend of genius and madness. I received the data about two facilities. In the first one, there were the results of the Odi's attempt to Forgemaster living beings." Orion replied.
"Do you mean to create artificial life?" Jirni had heard countless tales about such nonsense, but aside from Necromancy, no magic had ever been able to create a functional life form.
"No. I mean using light magic to alter the life force of their slaves. Carving runes inside their bodies, to use them as vessels for their Forgemastering spells and make them akin to enchanted items."
"What? Did they succeed?" Jirni turned pale for the first time in years.
"Of course not. As you know, life force is very delicate. Even with all their experiments, the Odi only managed to turn their victims into living slave items, but both their bodies and life span were horribly crippled.
"They could live for just a few hours before dying."
"So it's not a feasible line of research, right?" Jirni was worried about such an eventuality. Any mad tyrant would have made such human modification mandatory on both their subjects and prisoners, turning them into an unwilling army of spies.
It would have meant the end of life as she knew it, making the army and all the security measures that had protected the Kingdom until that moment useless.
"No. The biggest flaw of this kind of experiment is that the Forgemaster and the vessel cannot be the same person. Two kinds of mana cannot coexist in the same body, so the victim soon dies of mana poisoning."
"What about the second facility?" Jirni asked.
"It was equally disgusting. As you know, normal metals do not have a mana flow, which is the reason we Bond them with mana crystals. They are not only needed to fuel the Forgemastered spells, but also to help the relatively inert metal to withstand the magical energies without crumbling.
