Chapter 166 - A Believable Flashback

"AAAHHHHH! OOF!", Silvia exclaimed as she fell down a pit she didn't notice in time. Evidently, running for one's life in an attempt to escape from hungry dire wolves causes one to fail to notice hidden dangers.

Silvia was about to curse her foul luck until she heard the dire wolves baying over head. As their barking and growling got closer to the pit she fell in, Silvia held her breath and sat as still as she could.

Thanks to her hearing, she could hear the wolves sniffing around and yipping at each other. Minutes crawled as Silvia waited for the wolves to stop and leave the area.

Eventually, one of the wolves let out a bark and the pack moved away from her hiding spot.

A great feeling of relief came over her as she heard the wolves slowly walk away.

"Thank the makers...never thought I'd be praying...now where am I"?

As Silvia dusted herself off from the fall, she finally had time to take in her surroundings.

"Huh... must've fell into some ruins or a tomb or...something".

From what she could see, the area around were clearly made of cut stone. What kind of stone, she wasn't quite sure. If she had to guess...marble or some other fancy rock that rich people made their buildings out of.

"Hmmm. I could climb back out...", she said aloud to herself,"...or I could see if I can find something interesting to bring back home... possibly sell to some traveling binders".

Affirming her desire to explore, Silvia strode into the darkness and further into the ruined tomb.

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[Falling into a hole, into a set of ruins? Really?], Voxea quipped.

[Hey, I'm just mixing some details of the things we had to deal with lately with how I met you. Weren't you the one who taught me that the best lies have bits of truth in them]?

[Fair enough, carry on].

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"Well that's ominous", she commented aloud.

Silvia had entered a circular chamber, silver and golden treasure and trinkets decorating the walls. But the thing that had caught her eye, was the clear ice coffin in the dead center of the room.

Surprisingly, the coffin did not contain a rotting corpse or a pile of dust and bones, rather it contained a sleeping noble woman that appeared to be alive and well.

Silvia wasn't sure why, but she felt compelled to get closer to the coffin and stare directly at the "sleeping" woman.

"It can't be...a maji?", Silvia thought as she walked closer and closer to the coffin.

As far as Silvia remembered, most if not all the maji had died or disappeared with the fall of the old Empire. She had heard tales of binders coming across the spirits of maji passing on their inheritances to them, but she wasn't sure if they were blowing smoke or not...until this moment.

Once she got up close and personal to the coffin, she finally had a good look at the sleeping woman.

While the woman herself was quite pleasant looking, what caught Silvia's attention was the strange looking metal seal embedded in the coffin's lid. When Silvia looked from a different angle to see what it was from the bottom, she noticed that it was actually a mirror.

The mirror was octagonal in shape, and appeared to be made of a white-ish precious medal and embossed with all sorts of decorations that she couldn't gleam the meaning of.

What she could gleam however, was the big shiny jewel in the exact center of the mirror.

"I could probably sell this to a binder back at home...or keep it as a decoration. Either way, I'm taking this thing", Silvia thought with a tinge of greed.

Drawing her hunting knife, she carefully straddled the coffin and began to use the knife to lift the mirror from it's resting place.

Minutes passed as she weakened the coffin's hold on the mirror by carving the edge with her knife.

"And...pop"!

The mirror came out with a satisfying popping sound... followed a flood of magical light that blasted her from the hole she just caused.

[Hmmmm. You'll do. Take good care of my girl, okay]?

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"A little bit after that, I found myself back on the surface with a drajule in my hand", I said as the final note to my story, "And that's how I became a binder".

The group looked at me with silence, their expressions mixed.

[Think they bought it]?

"You have the luck of a devil", Lu Yan suddenly commented.

[That'd be a yes], Voxea confirmed.