Way Down in the Hole
When Tyr reached the bottom of the steps, he continued to sink through the floor, disappearing into the stone.
The wine cellar had been pretty thoroughly picked over the last time Liam paid a visit - and had a sinister drink session with Mickey. It had been further picked over since. Extremely dull sentry duty, apparently, was thirsty work. Mickey idly rifled through the shelves, shaking the few remaining bottles in a vain attempt to find one that hadn't long since coagulated.
Liam had time to inspect the walls and floors while he waited. The cellar was comparatively small, and most of the walls were covered with bottle racks. There didn't seem to be a convenient place for a secret door that wouldn't involve shifting shelves full of fragile, irreplaceable vintage vitae. The answer came soon enough, as the stone beneath his feet began to shift.
Even the mighty Tyr struggled with the massive slab, but it slowly rose out of the seemingly seamless marble. There didn't seem to be any sort of mechanism involved, but the Kiasyd had his own formidable ways of manipulating stone. There was just enough space in the room to allow him to slide the slab over. A staircase led down to a small vault, and Seavers' most guarded treasures.
What first stood out to Liam was the glittering pile of loot crammed into one corner. Seavers was a collector of valuable objects, but in his millennium on Earth, he had clearly accumulated quite a lot of hard currency. Gold coins - ranging from ancient drachmas to modern bullion coins - sat in neat stacks on a sturdy stone shelf. Alongside these were jewels of all cuts and descriptions, neatly sorted by type and arranged by colour, as well as stamped billets of several precious metals, and a small lead box marked radioactive.
There was a wine rack in here as well - thicker than the others and made of granite - though it bore only five bottles. They had been carefully dusted and maintained - and had remained so in their hermetically sealed conditions of the past decade. Three looked old, the other two fairly modern.
The real marvels, however, sat on an oak table in the opposite corner.
Before the Tremere had looted it, Seavers' haven had many precious antiquities and plinths containing rare texts lining its halls. He had little fear of marauders, enjoyed ostentation, and was quite generous (to his guests) when it came to sharing obscure knowledge - or at the very least lording his possession of it. But these were the objects he had chosen to secret away. That implied many things, danger chiefly among them.
The objects on the table, like most things of true power, were rather plain to behold. A knife with a simple hilt sat in a black leather sheath on a purpose-made stand. Liam instantly recognised the crossguard and pommel as being made of eversteel. Beside it sat a large wooden chest - slightly bigger than a breadbox. Its surface was inlaid with runes of warding. Liam was instantly reminded of Robyn’s “hex box” where she kept magical objects she regarded to be unsafe or untrustworthy.
Beside those sat a trio of books on a wide stand. The first, relatively new and professionally bound, was the Book of Nod. Liam knew it by reputation - an anthology of texts, some purported to be written by Caine himself, that were once scattered in fragments across the globe. It is also widely regarded as heretical by the Camarilla. A vampire had caused quite a stir in the 1900s by publishing and distributing the most complete collection of the texts to date, but by the time Liam had been Embraced, the Camarilla had destroyed most of the copies and the stir had largely died down. The second book, which looked even newer, was a copy of Revelations of the Dark Mother, another blasphemous gospel purported to be written by Lillith. The sordid story of its publication was quite similar to the first, although the incident had been more recent and far smaller. The third book had been expertly rebound in Smythe’s inimitable style, but the pages appeared quite old indeed. Liam could not translate the title, but its placement to the others was a good hint toward its nature.
Next to these, on its own stand, sat a fourth volume. Although Liam couldn’t translate the third book, his knowledge of ancient languages gave him a good idea of where to start looking (ancient Northern Semitic languages, possibly Canaanite). He couldn’t place the script of this one at all. It, too, was rebound, but its crumbling pages looked distinctly older. Something about this book called to Liam, but he couldn’t quite place it. It was almost as though it smelled familiar. In front of the stand, a small loupe rested on a velvet cushion. It appeared to be made of bone, and inscribed with some manner of magical glyphs. Liam had spent enough time with Robyn to recognize an enchanted item when he saw it.
Behind these other treasures, in a glass case, sat a brass chalice. It appeared to be carefully maintained, but the weather of centuries had worn away any adornments to its surface and left an indelible patina. The inside, however, shone as though it was brand new.
The final piece of furniture in the room was a well-made writing desk. A blotter and small pen case sat on its surface, and several bound books were stacked on a shelf on top of the desk. Mickey made a beeline for this, ignoring all the other splendour in the room. “Dibs,” he called.
Tyr frowned. He currently had no pockets, and would be unable to pass through stone while carrying anything in this trove. He shrugged, and headed back up the stairs to get his coat. “Remember, we have schedule,” he cautioned the others.
