>>11851399Celestia did not want me to go entirely alone, so she did have her dear but dim Guard Captain accompany me at least. Truth be told I haven't bothered to learn his name, he's insufferable.
But he works hard. I guess I can admire that.
At any rate, onward. We had made the journey through the Everfree Forest (for even that is better than the gloomy, dismal swamp beyond) with relatively little in the way of adventure. Some blue plants needed avoiding, I was told, but beyond that there were no more snags than the occasionally scurrying squirrel.
Once we had arrived at the ruins, the Guard Captain's work was at an end, and mine began. I quickly made my way into the old, half collapsed, ancient place. The air inside was stale with the dust of hundreds of years of relatively quiet brooding. But this was the same smell as on Earth.
The search itself was not much to tell of, I dropped a few stones on my left foot when a pile I was trying to push aside suddenly shook, and the bruise will last for a few days more. As it is, it stings to walk putting too much weight on the ball of my foot.
But that was also the large pile of rubble under which I found the box.
It is an amazing (I am wont to say luxurious) thing. It seems to be made of very thick, very heavy carved oak on all sides. The walls have hundreds of unique, carefully shaped figures of bats... with eyes so alive it almost seems like they are looking at you, and following you when you move.
Greedy little devils.
On the top of the box is the only jewlery, which is in gild inlay on carefully burnt plack wood, shaped into a pair of wings attached to a crest, with the crescent moon at its center. The moon itself seems nothing less than a strange, vibrant kind of sapphire that is always... lit, and a light blue instead of the usual depth-of-the-ocean blue.
There was no indication either that the box could be opened or that it had anything inside of it, it seemed perfectly hollow.
2/?
