Claws of Eternity ✔️

Chapter 27: The scale is tipped

"Alright." Giselle made herself comfortable. "Why is Anton's study down here?"

"There's knowledge here that is far too dangerous to be on the surface." Anton murmured while he wrote Jorge's words down.

"Let's start at the beginning, shall we? With the first poem." Codrin put the poem in front of Giselle, the only one she could originally understand.

"The scale is tipped, power on one side,

The sign is picked, troubles there hide.

Light, as well as darkness, is blinding,

The answer always lies in binding.

Keep this key close to your heart,

For everyone else would be torn apart.

To a place where it was, it must return

Take this where hope goes to burn."

Giselle read out loud again and added: "I still have that key."

"Good, keep it on you. I have no idea what it is. Maybe Anton could look at it. But tell me about the last line, it led you to the witch, right?" Codrin asked.

"Yes, 'take this where hope goes to burn.' That's what Jorge called the Inquisition Tower back in Carcassonne, so I listened to the strange poem." Giselle pointed to the last line.

"Ladies live there, where hope goes to burn." Jorge repeated and Anton immediately put the pen in his hand.

"I wonder about this witch, what did she tell you exactly?" Codrin asked.

"That my mother put a curse on me and that she would take it off. And she told me the story about the four figures." Giselle didn't know why she insisted on mentioning the four figures story when everyone seemed to tell her there are only three.

"What did she tell you exactly? Did you feel her magic?" Codrin leaned towards Giselle, his old, blue eyes shining in the light of the candles.

"Sanguis sanguini. Yes, she grabbed me by the neck and I felt something, a painful rush went through my body." Giselle remembered. Codrin crossed his hands in front of him.

"That sounds like dark magic. A white witch couldn't have done that, for sure." Codrin closed his eyes for a few moments. "Sanguis sanguini. Blood to blood. It's one of the ancient unlocking spells." He added and got up.

Codrin began walking around the table while Anton and Jorge quietly wrote words on a piece of paper. It was an interesting thing to see, those two old men so invested in something. Giselle wished she had a passion like that.

"Well, that's exactly what she said. That she will unlock what's been tamed." Giselle murmured and watched Codrin look at her in shock. His wide eyes stared at Giselle as he wordlessly nodded.

"Exactly." Anton whispered as if he had been listening to them all along. "If it was dark magic, there is only one possibility." He told Codrin and Codrin nodded again.

"It was the Tamer." Codrin's voice was barely audible as he stared at Giselle in utter disbelief.

"The what?" Giselle asked.

"The Tamer is one of the Five." Anton jumped in.

"You mean Four?" Giselle corrected him, remembering that the Five were the literal five dark tricksters left in the world and her mother was one of them.

"I mean Five, my dear, you're the fifth." Anton smiled.

Giselle never really took a moment to think about what it meant. Her mother was one of the five dark tricksters in the entire world, how powerful was she? How powerful was Giselle?