'What are the chances ?'
It might not be the same ring. It might just be a coincidence. Maybe a relative of one of these corpses inherited it and came here to pray, losing it in the process.
Yes, those were likely scenarios. They were three reasonable explanations -the first ones that popped in his head, mind you- all more probable than... The other one.
'No, no. It's not that, please don't fixate on it, it's actually not a big deal. What can a ring do ? Nothing. It's nothing. Drop it. Drop it and move on. Please. Now.'
But he didn't.
He was a bit paranoid, after all.
'Better to be safe than -Annnnnd shit. Didn't drop it in time. I gotta get better at this.'
He sighed deeply. It was too late now. He had to investigate this insignificant ring like it mattered. He examined it as he got up.
The ring didn't have any stone on it, but it still had a plateau where the jewel would be. Inscriptions were carefully carved on it.
In the middle of the flat part, an open book was drawn. An eye could be seen above it. Wrapping around the symbols was written the phrase "Notitia est Lux". This was the same nearly forgotten language they had already encountered all the way back at the first mysterious house. It meant "Knowledge is light".
...At least he thought it did. The font was very strange, so he might have read it wrong.
And that was it.
'Kinda weird, but.... Nothing alarming.'
He examined more.
.... He didn't discover anything else. The ring was very mundane. Which was pretty annoying. Baoba was going to investigate deeply regardless of what he found. He would have loved to at least have a lead.
He looked some more, still not finding any new clues.
'Hmmm.... Well there's a few possibilities. Either it's a regular ring someone just dropped, in which case I should return it but I don't really care, or it's a secret magical ring that belongs to an evil organisation that will thwart our plans, in which case I have to find other people who also wear it and interrogate them or we will die horrible deaths.'
He immediately began to look around and check attentively his coworkers' hands. None of them had it.
'Well it's a secret ring after all. They wouldn't just wear it around.' He suddenly got an idea.'In fact, it's probably such a taboo that if I wore it for the rest of the day, another member of this group would come and scold me !'
He slipped the ring on his index finger, delighted at the idea of letting his prey come to him instead.
As soon as it was in place, however, Baoba felt something was wrong.
The ring got colder out of nowhere.
Crack.
One fissure suddenly appeared on the metal, running all around the plateau.
Crack. Crack.
The ring was shattering. The metal was getting more pale as well.
The elf panicked, and quickly removed it, but it was too late. It continued breaking until all that was left was a barely wearable, fragile piece of grey metal.
He stayed frozen.
'The chances.... Are most definitely increasing by the second. This would qualify as alarming in my book.' His emotions had not caught up yet.
In less than ten seconds, the situation had completely changed.
The ring was obviously some kind of magic artefact. But despite spontaneously disintegrating, Baoba had no clue about what it did.
It could have been used in combat. It could be some kind of locator. It might have just revealed his identity to the mysterious organisation. It could have just cursed him.
Hell, for all he knew, it could very well explode in his face in two seconds !
'Wait. That's true, isn't it ?'
He quickly set it down descreetly and speed walked to the other side.
Now at a safe distance, and having just moved, Baoba's feelings caught up with reality.
'What the actual fuck ??? Was that ???? What kind of precious magic item self destructs ? What kind of mastermind-having overlord secret sect would just waste their ressources like that ? Why is it here ? Who lost it ? Was it even lost ? Why did it break ? Did I just sound an alarm ? Did anyone see me freak out ? Is anyone seeing me freak out righ now ??'
After confirming no one was looking at him, he called down a little.
'Important questions first. Is anything urgent ?'
The matter of it potentially exploding was already settled. But other bad things might happen from the triggered magic.
'If anyone was alerted by that, they will come here to investigate, and I'll just have to look as innocent as possible. If it gave up my identity... nothing I could do about that right now. I'll have to see about that later. The team is in a little danger though, I better warn them.'
He began opening and clenching his hand in a peculiar, uneven rythm, communicating to Pando who was without a doubt watching to be ready for what might follow.
'Next, I'll keep trying to look as innocent as possible while Pando searches for strange behaviour. I'll just leave the ring there for at least a day for safety, it's not like I can actually do anything with it. For now, I have to do is look like this is a perfectly normal day.'
He went back to his preistly duties, all the while keeping a mental note of the potential blast zone around the compromised ring.
And with that, he was finally safe from immediate consequences. He did not waste a second and got to conjecturing once more.
This was obviously a big deal. It seemed to concur with his previously baseless hypothesis about the secret organisation. That would mean an entity behind the scenes was powerful and hidden enough to issue so many magical rings that could only be worn by the right people.
He knew they could be worn in some cases because when Urtica talked about them, he failed to mention how they looked about as solid as the humans' moral code.
The idea of a secret organisation did not come from nowhere. Pando has also said before that she even detected some benign shady meetings that happened regularly. This was not previously cause for alarm because it was not unusual. Most towns had underground, black market-type activities, it was normal.
In fact, were it not for one crucial detail, Baoba would feel much safer.
He had found this in the church.
Being in charge of cleaning, he was certain this ring wasn't on the floor this morning.
And today had had really low numbers of visitors. The few that showed up only sat on the benches, close from the entrance. The ring was basically all the way in the back. They couldn't have lost something here.
So the owner of this ring was a priest.
This fact was already alarming enough. It meant he was not the only one infiltrated in this church.
But that was not the worst part.
This was clearly a grand operation for the supposed organisation. A lot of risks were involved in it.
Not many benefits could push such a force to take them.
And in this specific church, there was really only one thing worth the trouble.
A certain deity, one who has great wealth of knowledge to offer - Noti.
'Notitia est Lux...'