Laura's POV
"I hate to ruin your moment, but we don't know where Maman is."
"Yes we do." Perry says. "Well, I do. Since she possessed my body for so long, we have some sort of connection between our souls. So if you give me a moment to focus, I should be able to determine where she is."
"Maman has a soul?" Carmilla murmurs, half sarcastic and half serious.
Perry stares off at the tree line for a minute, her forehead scrunched up as she concentrates.
She grimaces and blinks, turning her attention back to us. "The Dean is currently trying to fend off Lophiiformes. But her body is weak, almost as weak as an ordinary human's. She's going to be eaten."
"Why is her body so weak?" Mattie wonders aloud. "It can't just be the fall; I've seen her survive much worse. That could've weakened her enough that she'd want a new host until she could get her body back, but not to that extent."
"I think the spell you did and the spell I did took its toll. Not to mention that I've been trying to steal some of her life energy the entire time I've been aware that she was possessing me." Perry explains.
Mattie looks at her in disbelief and reluctant amazement. "That is... incredibly dangerous. I haven't even taught Carmilla how to do that."
"It also worked." Perry retorts. "If I didn't, she would have won the fight for my body."
"Okay, okay. Back to Maman. She's going to be eaten? That's it?" Carmilla asks, and I definitely share her skepticism.
"That's it." Perry confirms. "Their powers separately are at an apocalyptic level, but together they're somehow cancelled out. I'm not sure what specifically is going to happen."
"So what's going to go wrong?" I ask. "Something always goes wrong."
Carmilla moves closer to me, reaching out and grabbing my hand. There's no doubt that she's remembering the last time things went wrong. You know, when I fell into the pit and she had to rescue me. Though I know she'd argue it was me and I saved myself, but it was her words that gave me the courage.
"Something might go wrong." Perry admits, and I try to hide a smile when I notice LaF and JP moving closer to her as if to protect her from whatever's going to happen.
The ground rumbles and I squeeze Carmilla's hand harder as the earth beneath us shifts. We nearly fall when the quaking stops. The extremely loud noise doesn't stop, just gets slightly quieter. Two chorused screeches echo from the pit's direction.
We all head toward the sound. We stop at the edge of the pit. There's a blinding black light emanating from the center, engulfing the large area where Lophii usually resides. The light travels up for as far as I can see, like a giant pillar the color of the sky on a starless night.
"Let's get out of here!" I yell above the noise, knowing that whatever's about to happen won't be good and not being close to it would probably be best.
"Meet at the cabin!" Matska shouts.