Elias didn't bother changing out of his SuperValue uniform when he got home. The adrenaline of his conversation with Mrs. Albright was still coursing, a frantic energy demanding to be spent. He collapsed into his desk chair, his eyes fixed on the panel where Finn stood defeated before the magically frozen waterfall.
“Guard your routes well,” he mumbled, quoting the old woman as he grabbed his charcoal. The waterfall wasn't the problem; it was a symptom of a forgotten route.
Finn, on the page, turned his back on the glittering ice and pulled an ancient, rolled-up schematic from his pack. Elias drew the schematic to look surprisingly similar to a supermarket floor plan: detailed, organized, but riddled with cross-hatched sections indicating neglect. Following the logic of the forgotten water’s journey, Finn found a descent shaft disguised beneath a massive, immovable stone pedestal in the city's ancient marketplace.
Elias focused his drawing for the next three hours on the suffocating darkness of the underground conduits. Finn navigated chambers filled with stagnant, plague-ridden water and slimy fungal growths. The air was thick, heavy, and silent—a stark contrast to the supermarket’s noise, yet equally oppressive. Elias felt a profound connection to his character; both were solitarily navigating the ignored underbelly of a complex system.
Finally, Finn reached the heart of the blockage: a vast, ornate bronze sluice gate, rusted and sealed shut. This was the master valve for the Northern Aqueduct, designed centuries ago to regulate the entire water flow, but neglected into obsolescence. The plaque above it read: For the Preservation of the Continuous Journey. The magical ice above was just the overflow from this single, system-wide failure.
The gate was too heavy, too fused with time to move by hand. Elias drew Finn setting up his large, heavy cartographer’s tripod—a tool designed for stability—and rigging it as a lever. It was a brutal, physical task, much like Elias wrestling a stubbornly stuck pallet jack loaded with cases of soda. Finn strained, his muscles bulging under his leather armor.
Click.
The sound of the bronze finally giving way was deafening in the silence of the tunnels. Elias drew a massive crack running down the valve face. Then, with a roar, the sluice gate burst open. A torrent of pristine, magical spring water, clean and life-giving, exploded through the chamber, washing away the stagnation and the fungal decay.
Elias quickly sketched the consequence in the panel above: in the closest residential district of Veridia, a wall that had been moments from collapsing into dust halted. The spread of the plague reversed, retreating from the newly purified ground.
Elias dropped his charcoal pen, a wave of relief washing over him. He had solved the problem of Veridia using the principles of inventory management and the philosophy of canned pears. The city was saved—for now—because he had taken the time to observe the mundane flow of his own life. Exhausted, he looked at his SuperValue nametag. Elias, the Cartographer, had successfully guarded the route. He finally allowed himself to sleep, dreaming of perfectly stacked shelves and rushing, clean water.