Re: Wonders Investigation
"My apologies if I misspoke," Jarvis responds. "I am use to having to explain to the visitors that come here seeking... enlightenment, so I just used the easiest explanation."
"Esmeralda, when she died, was not 'buried' as I said. She was laid to rest in the crypts beneath this monastery... crypts, I might add, which she herself had built. And she was the first to be placed in one."
"Sometime in the ensuing 200 years, her body disappeared from the crypt. By then, it was only visited rarely, so the absence wasn't noticed for who knows how long."
"The crypt was still locked, hence the talk of ascendance starting. If her remains were removed for whatever reason, no one in the monastery was aware of it. You would think that she might have foreseen this and made arrangements accordingly, no?"
"Nothing has been seen or heard of her remains to this day. If they had been taken for some necromantic ritual or such, surely someone would have said something by now."
As he talks, he leads Chess ala'riina to the vaults. The vault where scrolls are kept is different than the one where the books are kept. All scrolls are in bone or copper or brass tubes, sealed, and organized by type and author and stored in a rack of pigeon holes.
It takes about an hour to go through the clerical scrolls, pulling out one tube and deciphering the faded and worn writing on it. But Jarvis and Chess ala'riina do find a tube that claims to have the appropriate scroll within.
Jarvis unseals the cap, gently feels the parchment inside to see how brittle it has become, and then slowly pours an oil (kept in the area for just that purpose) into the tube. He waits for a minute before pouring the oil back out, letting the tube fully drain, and then slowly extracting the scroll and handing it to Chess ala'riina.