91 Future Plans

After a moment of silence, Nito continued with his story.

"After all that happened, things seemed to stabilize for a while. The crater became a place of fear and death for nobles. Some tried to go there in hopes of recovering some of the resources left behind, but they all disappeared… Even now, no noble will go near the place, despite the danger being long gone.

As for my point in telling you all of this, well that has to do with the only remaining survivor of the House of Ursag. The youngest son of the Patriarch still lives to this day, and has made himself a menace to nobles across the continent over the last two decades or so. The rumors say that he is now the leader of an underground organization that has been protecting young women born with Harmonic Heritages from the nobles and anyone else trying to get their hands on them. This organization has been so successful that the northern and western nobles have for the first time started working together to hunt this organization down.

There was even whispers that a few years ago they attacked one of the stronger western noble houses and managed to free someone who had a Harmonic Heritage. That is unprecedented as the nobles would rather kill the Harmonic Heritage carrier than to let someone else get their hands on them. Often the nobles place a ridiculous amount of powerful arrays and magical restrictions on the carrier, turning them into mindless puppets that they can control. If the Harmonic Heritage carrier is taken from them, they can then kill them remotely with little effort.

If this organization was who freed the Harmonic Heritage carrier from that western noble house, they must have someone extremely powerful with them. From what I was able to find out, if we want to get our hands on a sealing array for your Heritage Zoey, we need to get into contact with this organization. They are the only ones besides the nobles that would have access to the array that we need. After all, they would have no way of hiding all those Harmonic Heritages without that capability."

"I assume you managed to locate where we can start looking for this organization?" Athena asked once Nito had finished.

"Yes, I have two possible locations we can check," Nito said as he pointed at the map.

Zoey saw that there were a few locations marked on the map already. She could see the location of Sand Pit which looked to be at the northern quarter of the Exile Frontier. To the northeast of Sand Pit was the crater where she had met Athena for the first time and to the northwest of the crater was the city of Colten and the noble owned lands beyond. From Sand Pit, to the west and east were more noble lands and to the south was the wilderness that made up the Exile Frontier, and all of that ended where a large desert began in the south.

Nito started to point out some locations. "The last location where one of these sealing arrays was reported was in the city of Nine Peaks to the southwest, right where the mountains reach the desert. The area is in turmoil right now thanks to two noble factions that are at war.

Another rumor I heard indicates that the organization that is helping Harmonic Heritage carriers has been reportedly sighted in the east in several cities along the eastern border near the Wildlands. There is a war going on there between the noble houses and a feral beast tide that shows no sign of slowing down. Those two locations are the most likely to give us a lead, so my suggestion is we start there."

Athena nodded as she thought over the information. Zoey knew very little about the continent they were on, so she kept quiet for now.

Athena spoke after a moment, "I think that Zoey and I should go east and check there. I have heard about the western nobles, and we should keep Zoey as far away from them as possible. You on the other hand should be able to get around there pretty easy since there is a Vekt hive in the area."

Nito nodded, "I agree. I have some contacts there as well that could help me out with the search."

"So it's settled then?" Athena asked as she looked at Nito and Zoey.

Zoey and Nito both nodded in agreement. At least they had something to work towards now.

"We will have to be careful. Be sure you can trust someone before sharing any information, and never mention Zoey or her Heritage." Athena warned all of them. "The Rellen family already knows about her, and if more nobles find out, it would be absolute chaos."

All three of them looked at one another, finding resolve in each other's eyes. Even though Nito and Athena had just met, they were both friends of Zoey's, and that bound them together. Athena felt that Zoey was a little sister for her to protect, and Nito felt like Zoey was his benefactor and his savior. Both of them were connected to Zoey in some way, and they could see that both of them cared for Zoey, and this was leading to a bond of trust forming between them despite the short time they had known each other.

"Here. Before we continue, I have something for both of you," Zoey said as she placed three small items on the table.

Athena's eyes lit up as she was what it was. Zoey had laid out three beautiful pieces of jewelry on the table, each clearly designed for a specific person.

Athena's was a brilliant topaz cut and placed in a silver serpent that coiled protectively around the gem. The ensemble was small, but incredibly intricate, and was designed to fit nicely on the earlobe as decoration.

Nito's was a ruby gemstone polished and set in a wreath of flame that was fashioned from a black metal that was cool to the touch. It was also incredibly intricate to the point that the metal flames looked like they were real when the light reflected through the gemstone.

Finally, Zoey had a small round sapphire set in a metallic vermilion disc. It looked plain at first glance, but the closer you looked, the more you would think that the sapphire hid an ocean inside its depths, and that the vermilion disc shimmered like the sun.

"Go ahead, try them on!" Zoey said with a smile as she placed hers on her ear.

Once in place, the magic array she had etched on the jewelry would keep it there, among other things. Nito and Athena put theirs on as well, and Athena pulled over a mirror so they could see how they looked.

"This is beautiful hun, but what's the occasion?" Athena asked as she admired her gift.

Zoey merely grinned, then raised an eyebrow at Athena through the mirror. The other woman looked quizzical for a moment, then her eyes flew wide in surprise! Zoey could not help but burst out laughing at the comical look on Athena's face as Nito looked on in confusion.

"How did you do that?" Athena grabbed the still laughing Zoey and shook her while Zoey kept laughing like a fool. "Do it again! Tell me how you did it! Is it the jewel??"

Finally, Zoey managed to get her laughter under control and answered Athena, "{It's an array placed into the gem itself, and it allows us to communicate using our thoughts through magic, just like I am doing now!}"

This time both Nito and Athena's eyes few wide, as they could both hear Zoey's voice in their heads! Zoey broke out laughing again at their comical expressions, and it was a full minute before she could explain how to use their new jewelry.

She had designed a unique, magical communication array and placed one into each of the gemstones. The arrays coded themselves to the recipient once the jewelry was worn and could not be used by anyone else. Additionally, the transmission signal used to send information was scrambled and coded so nobody without one of the communicators would be able to understand what the transmissions were saying. Zoey had designed the communicators by using Gaian tech and incorporating the magic network of this universe to enhance the functions that she wanted.

The communicators could send thought transmissions to theoretically anywhere on the planet and only required a small amount of magic power to activate and use. Zoey had also invented a way to hide the fact that the gems were magical. By including her Null Rune in the array and setting up an alternating refresh rate that cycled a hundred times a second, the gemstone became invisible to magical detection, even to her interface which was surprising. She had plans to develop that tech further if she could.

Once she explained to her friends what they were for and how to use them, she got profuse thanks from Nito, and a bear hug from Athena. After they talked some more about their future plans, the three of them decided to turn in and rest for the day. All of them were tired after the last few days of excitement.

Tomorrow would no doubt bring more adventure for the unlikely trio of friends.