THAT ILLUSION || ONC 2021

~•{Chapter #12}•~

Galene widened her shock struck lashes for some good minutes. She turned to look at Serephina and Mordana only to see their surreptitious glances.

"Holy hermits! Did you inherit the certain ruin? Lords, be merciful." She gulped down a glass of water while the women skimmed at Eir's petite limping frame in a dreadful hush.

"Are you trained to use it?" Galene inquired, expecting things to be less tangled.

"In titbits and some basic readings that he had taught me. After seeing him perish in front of my eyes, I could never forgive this stupidity. I could strive against my fury to have it worn, but broke my promise of learning to use it." Eir wiped her trickling tears on her wrists, sniffing her breathes of less burden after a long time.

"Oh, Eir! Come along here." Galene embraced her warm arms around her and let her cry to gather her lost self.

Serephina tried to assimilate things on her mind that raised a mutiny. She closed her eyes and took long breathes to suppress her momentous rage. She felt it all wrong yet she tried to be less hurting. To her, Eir was an unasked mother. She wiped out her anger and engaged herself to lessen Eir's burden.

Mordana's stilled mind did make her mad. Even if they were pouncing prancers, she couldn't accept this. She knew that she wasn't ready to wage a war of words, but neither could she wreath a comforting blanket with them. To her, trust was a one-way road that Eir had already forsaken. She chewed her fury between her grinding teeth and pressed her lips tight to disguise her irate odours.

"Thanks, Eir. I'm glad you could accept it. At least you did say it before things worsened." Serephina patted her hardened shoulders.

"Sere, things are bitter. I wish I was attentive earlier." Her words mystified them once more.

Before any could bargain their usurped stability, shuffling hustles of hurried strides caught their attention.

"Moh... Uhm. There you are. Here, quick," Hugh spoke between his fast breaths.

His tall slender legs sprinted towards Galene extending something covered in velvet golden clothes. The crusted outlines with a crater in the middle made it appear like a bowl carrying some flat article, making the girls raise their brows to arrow their unasked questions. Before any response slipped out of their anxious minds, he pushed the cloaked relic into her clammy hands.

"Mom, is there something you need to sort in Narngons?" His doubts were answered with a nod. Her unusual gesture and weeping sniffs of Eir clouded his senses.

"Did I disturb a private conversation?"

"Ah, no. They are fine. Is this bowl the relic?" Mordana tried to fabricate a curiousness.

"Nah! Bowl is too large to be a gate for a mortal world. Our relic is something you would never need until the threads beckon you to hunt it down." Hugh played his riddling words amidst the already chaotic air.

"Threads?" Serephina pondered while loosening her right grip from Eir.

"You will know soon," he recited, making her chew up her lips in a smug smile.

As they were conversing, Galene had opened the velvet wraps and placed the flat round stand on the tea table. She took a short red-stained thread and cleaned its pinpoint nook. She then mounted a slender metal piece, with a sharp point at the tip and an eye-sized void on top. She dug through the bowl and picked something up that flared a new noise in the air.

With as much care possible she picked a minuscule blue kyanite stone vibrating with a faint whimper, transmitting the frequencies arriving from the other end. She cleaned the stone with vapours of specks of cosmic dust filled in the bowl.