The Golden Amulet (PJO, Sequel to The Silver Ring)

Chapter 47

To our astonishment, as we watched, the man walked away from us and sat in a chair a small distance away. He closed his eyes, giving me the feeling that he was trying to ignore us.

"Er . . ." Rosaline said. "What exactly are you doing?"

"Sleeping," the smith replied in an even gruffer tone, not even bothering to open his eyes.

"Well . . . would you mind helping us before you take your late afternoon nap?"

"Yes." And that was that.

Rosaline turned towards me and spoke in a mumble. "What the hell is going on?"

"Maybe he's having a bad day?" I suggested.

"That still doesn't give him an excuse to ignore people he's never met before," Rosaline hissed out. She was really mad, and quite understandably too. One of the things she hated the most was when people ignored each other; she thought that it was a waste of time and helped nobody.

I put a calming hand on her shoulder. "We should probably leave."

"And then what?" she asked. "This is our only lead to get into Deeplige. It's a walled city with hundreds of guards. We can't just infiltrate it."

"Well, thinking of a plan would do better than just standing here waiting for a guy who obviously doesn't want to help some confused people." I raised my voice for the latter half of the sentence sot he smith could hear, but he didn't even so much as grunt to reply. The only reason I knew he was still awake and heard me was that his foot twitched.

Rosaline saw it too. "Let me try one more time," she told me, then turned towards the smith. "Excuse me, but this is really important. It pertains to why this whole Chaos base was constructed on Planet Void."

"Look, lady," the smith began, finally opening his eyes. "Do you know how many people come over here every day, saying that their request was 'of the utmost importance'?"

I could tell that Rosaline didn't really want to play along, but she still said, "How many?"

"Too many to count." The smith rubbed at his eyes wearily. "So forgive me if you're actually here for an important reason, but I don't believe you." He closed his eyes. "Leave me alone. Ask another smith if you have to, but my shift is over."

I looked around and noticed his forge was red hot, with a bar of Chaos metal in there, slowly turning red hot as well. "Why is that still on, then?" I asked, pointing toward the forge.

The smith opened one eye up to look where I was pointing to, then glared at me. "I was going to cool that off after you guys left."

"We're not leaving," Rosaline said cooly, finally losing her control over her anger. "We've shown you enough patience as it is. You are supposed to be helping people in this base, even if they lie. That's your job. And if you show me that you don't take it seriously, we're going to have a severe problem."

At this thinly veiled threat, the smith fully opened his eyes, also angry now. "You can't order me around," he spat out. "I'll do what I want to and nothing else."

Rosaline glared at him. "Help us. That's all we're asking."

However, the man's patience had run out. "Get out," he said, turning his attention to the Chaos metal bar in the forge. "You're no longer welcome here."

"Do you know who I am?" Rosaline asked, her voice rising.

And that's when I realized something really bad was going to go down.

Rosaline wasn't one to flaunt who she was, even in situations where she deserved to. Instead, she left it only for those times when there was no other way to get through a certain scenario. Ergo, given this information, it was apparent to me that Rosaline was going to explode any second.

However, even though the smith had an insane amount of muscles, I wasn't worried about Rosaline's chance against him. Instead, I was worrying about his chance against Rosaline.

"Do you know who I am?" the smith roared back, jumping out of his chair.

Psi's older brother? I wanted to say, but I pushed it down, knowing it would only make the situation worse.

"Someone that takes orders from me," Rosaline said coldly. "So help me out, would you?"

The smith gritted his teeth in frustration. "Get. Out."

Rosaline's eyes flashed with anger. "The only one who will be getting out is you."

"Don't make me kick you out," the smith threatened, jumping out of his chair.

Rosaline and I tensed in reply.

And then I saw something from the corner of my eye.

I spun around and looked that way.

A figure in a Chaos uniform was hurrying towards the door with a dagger in her hands. 

A dagger made out of Void Gold and had emerald engravings. Exactly like Rosaline's.

However, I didn't want to be so accusatory at the first glance. Given that Adriana—a simple Void soldier nowhere near an important position within the army—had such an important dagger might mean they were a common tool given to Void soldiers. This Chaos soldier might've just gotten it from defeating a Void soldier in combat, and was trying to find out what it was, just like us. Still, I looked back to see if Rosaline had her dagger.

The dagger was missing from where Rosaline had dropped it on the counter. Which meant the Chaos soldier had taken ours.

By this time, Rosaline had also realized something was awry. We looked back at the soldier, who was one step from escaping out of the door. They glanced back at us.

It was Adriana.

She slipped out of the door with our only lead of how to get into Deeplige in her hands once again.