Repellant

Mayra volunteered to deliver the wolf repellant before she went to help Jessie, freeing up Finn to get back to the tunnels under the city. Thanking her younger friend and heading off, Finn soon came to the place she'd exited the night before and met up with her team.

Joe seemed in a fair mood, Kristoff had reassumed his haughty air, and the third man, whose name Finn couldn't remember, seemed tired and maybe a bit bored.

They walked most of the way with Riley's team (Finn noted that Riley seemed in very good spirits), and split off at a branch of a particularly winding corridor at the end of a long, descending slope.

She didn't care for the smaller, darker spaces here. They each had lamps which did a good job of spreading light down the hallways, but part of her feared they would go out one by one and leave them in a maze of black.

Steeling herself against the wave of anxiety, she focused on the task at hand. Finally, they arrived at the first chamber to search. Kristoff drew his sword and used it to knock down the cobwebs blocking their entry into the room. It was terribly musty. Dust covered all the surfaces, and the air smelled stale.

The first several crates were items she didn't recognize as being anything significant. They seemed odd. A greenish rock about the size of her fist, an oddly-shaped stick that was onyx black in color, some amber, and a white stone that seemed to shimmer like fire. Other odds and ends with no particular rhyme or reason to them filled these crates.

Finn tried to find any sort of explanation for their presence, but had none.

It was as if someone had gathered a collection of completely random items in one place. The rest of her team had no guesses as to why these things were here, but they had been down there so long that no one dared remove them in case they were important.

She sighed in mild disappointment over the lack of discovery, but they moved on to the next room in their search. This room, equally neglected and dusty, contained an array of books, which Finn found promising. Eagerly, she opened the first volume to see what manner of secret knowledge was stored here in the deepest, most ancient reaches of the tunnels under Klain.

Genealogy. She blinked a few times and set aside the volume, moving on to the next. It was also genealogy. A quick, cursory perusal of the remaining volumes showed her that the entire room was filled with it. Census data and genealogies of the entire populace of Klain, going back to its beginning.

Finn balked at the thought of going through all of these books in some sort of fruitless hunt for relevant information, but something inside her told her not to discard it as useless.

With a sigh, she pulled a chair up to the table that stood in the center of the room, dusted the surfaces off, and opened the book. It appeared to be the one most recently placed down there; it began about a hundred years ago and ran backward in time.

Not at all knowing what she was supposed to be looking for, Finn began scanning the pages. A distant rumbling caught her attention. Some dust filtered down from the roof of the room.

"What was that?" She asked Kristoff.

"I'm not sure," His voice was steady, but his eyes betrayed the anxiety he was feeling. "We'll find out when we're done here."

The rumbling continued, like loud beats of a distant drum which shook the ground slightly underneath them.

"... Are we safe here?" Finn's voice had risen in pitch as she struggled against the fear that the mountain of rocks and dirt above them would come crashing down any second.

"Us? Oh, we're extremely safe. Look, the ceiling in these old tunnels is solid rock. That's why everything is so narrow, it was cut from the bedrock of the mountain. It's not like the dirt tunnels you might find other places, like the newer entrances. Those are reinforced with wood beams, of course, but this is far better. In any case, we're much safer here than anywhere in the city."

"You're saying that rumbling means the city is unsafe??" Finn's anxiety was only growing with each answer she received.

Kristoff finally turned to her. "This is not productive. We have a job to do. We do it. Worrying and discussing what we cannot change or control will accomplish nothing. Finishing this task may accomplish everything. Get to work."

His voice and speech were harsh, but the ire that rose in Finn's throat at being talked down to in such a way snapped her out of the mental spiral she'd begun. She bit back a retort and nodded, grateful that he'd been able to keep her from losing track of herself and fleeing the tunnels to make sure everyone in the city was not harmed by whatever was happening.

Finn turned back to her book, determined to focus as the men worked on their own volumes. She ran her finger down each page, scanning for anything that caught her attention or rang a bell. She knew the Fae could watch and hear many things, and thought loudly at them that some help would not go unappreciated at this point.

She turned another page and continued scanning, blocking out thoughts in the background trying to figure out whether the fact that the rumbling had stopped was good or very, very bad.

Going through this page, she paused a moment on a name that sounded familiar.

"Alfred the Wainwright. Wife, Roberta daughter of James the Mapmaker. Departed Klain to establish farming village. Alfred was the son of Peter the Wainwright, son of..." The list went on.

Finn's great grandfather Alfred had been one of the founders of the small village where she grew up, a wagonmaker-turned-farmer. Her great grandmother had been named Roberta, and Roberta's father was the origin of the maps the village possessed. Was she looking at her own family tree? A smile ghosted across her face as she continued tracing her genealogy backward through time. The list of "son of" would be tedious if she didn't know that it was the line from which she came.

The list went much further back than she expected, and she contemplated each name as she read.

"....Son of James the scribe, son of Prince John the General, second son of King Itherian, father of nations."

Finn stared at the page for a moment.

"Um, Kristoff? Did Klain have kings?" Finn wished she knew the history better than she did.

"At the very beginning, perhaps. Not for long." Kristoff said. "Why do you ask?"

"Can you tell me anything about King Itherian?" She asked another question instead of answering, and the officer pondered a moment.

"More of a legend than history, I believe. Back before Klain was even officially a nation. He gathered people together to build the city, the stories say."

"Can we find more information about him in here somewhere?" Finn asked. She felt like she was onto something, though she couldn't put her finger on what. She went searching for the very oldest volume in the room, figuring if he founded Klain, there would be no records previous to him.

She had to go through several shelves but finally found what she was looking for. She opened the first page of the ancient book and found an introduction to the genealogies.

"The following accounts for the lives of the descendants and subjects of King Itherian, first and only king of Klain. His six sons were Rhonian, John, Robar, Ande, Frankan, and Willis. Rhonian gathered rebels from all amongst the surrounding hills. They possessed unnatural powers, and Rhonian brought them together in an attempt to overthrow the King. With help from a Sorcerer the rebellion was quashed, and Rhonian was banished with what remained of his followers.

"The King, seeing that one man holding the power was not ideal for ongoing peace, divided his rule amongst his remaining sons, with each holding a different role and responsibilities. Rhonian had vowed revenge, and so a dedication to preparing for a coming war was paramount to the running of the kingdom."

Finn read it through twice. How fascinating! She was still staring at the page when a bright doorway appeared and Gwen stepped through.

"It's wonderful you're all right. Oh, and you found it! I was afraid..." She paused, seeing Finn's confusion.

"Found what?" Finn asked.

"Never mind. I brought the rest of the herbs. It's a little later than everyone would have liked, but we were working hard. The recipe we came up with uses exceedingly rare ingredients." Gwen prattled on, as the men in the room cowered in stunned silence.

"Not never mind, Gwen. What did I find? This book?" Finn held it up and judged from Gwen's face that she was onto something. "Is this the key to the prophecy? I felt like it was important, but I couldn't put my finger on it."

"The thoughts are there, but they didn't come to the surface yet. I was a little early," Gwen grimaced.

"They're already in my head?" Finn blinked at the grey-haired childlike Fae.

"Of course, Serafina. I can't hear what's not there." Gwen gave a tolerant sigh.

"Let me think. I started on this because I found my family tree, and traced it backward and was... wait. Family Tree. Roots... the roots of a family tree??"