A Shade of Vampire 77 A Fate of Time - Bella Forrest Page 0,38
insulted. "The spell is fine! Look at it! It's still working! It's resonating with Death, but I just don't know how. She isn't here."
Lumi and Nethissis did a tour of the platform, too, their hands lighting up as they used the Word's magic to find whatever it was that had brought us here. "If it wasn't Death, it was something else that drew your spell here," Lumi said to Soul. "What could it have been?"
The First Tenners thought about it for a moment. Phantom was the first to reply. "Whatever it was, it has Death's energy signature. Perhaps an object of hers?"
The tension was killing me. Poor Taeral was livid, unable to speak anymore. The strain was torturing us all, and there wasn't much we could do to stop it. Our emotions were free, and we were all falling through a dark tunnel with no light of salvation in sight.
Surrendering, I dropped to my knees and exhaled sharply, shuddering in the process. Raphael joined me, kneeling in front of me as he cupped my face and smiled. "It's not over yet," he said.
"I know. I just… I'm so tired," I whispered.
"We all are," Riza chimed in. Only then did I feel the hot tears streaming down my cheeks. I was crying. I was shaking and crying.
Herakles came over, as did Eva and Varga. Amazingly, they were all more concerned about my state of mind than the absolute dead-end we'd stumbled into. Maybe my broken soul could be fixed, unlike this situation with Death.
Seeley stopped in the middle of the platform and bent down, picking something off the ground. He inspected it carefully and brought it over to us. I could see it clearly as he held out his hand.
"What in the world is that?" I asked, hearing my voice tremble.
"It's a pebble," Seeley replied. "Well, not just any pebble. It's a message."
His expression inspired hope and curiosity, but I dared not allow myself to feel anything until he told us more about it.
Phantom, Widow, and Soul came closer, each of them gawking at the pebble, on which I could make out several etchings. Something was written on it, but I didn't recognize the symbols. Seeley, on the other hand, afforded himself the luxury of a confident smile.
"Death left this for us to find," he continued. "I can feel traces of her on it. What I couldn't sense earlier, I do now."
"She left us breadcrumbs?" I managed, remembering an old tale from Earth about a little boy and a little girl who'd gotten lost once, and they'd used breadcrumbs in the hope that their father might find them before they starved.
"It's her old language. The very first she invented," Phantom said, and looked up at Seeley. "Do you know of it?"
He nodded. "She taught me a few words. It's the one language Reapers don't have access to unless she allows it," he replied. "But I can't tell what she's saying. Can you?"
"I'm a little rusty, too, but I can tell you one thing. The words are jumbled." Phantom sighed. "They're not meant to make sense in that order. We need to figure out the message on our own."
Widow scoffed. "Why would she do that? And how did it mess with Soul's spell?"
"I don't think it did. Not on purpose, at least," Soul said. "It's her energy signature. Like Phantom suggested, my spell reacted to an object of hers."
"Why didn't it take us to her, directly?" I asked.
The Soul Crusher seemed uncomfortable. I figured he didn't have an encouraging explanation. "Because she's probably untraceable. Either by her own devices or by the Spirit Bender's doing. So the spell brought us to the next best thing… something she left behind for us to come across."
Lumi cursed under her breath, looking up at the sky and closing her eyes for a moment, as if praying. Maybe she was, in fact, praying. To the Word… to all the forces of the universe.
"Then why did she leave a puzzle and not a clear message?" the swamp witch asked. There was tension in her voice, and I felt it all the way down in the pit of my stomach.
"I'm afraid we're going to have to ask her when we see her," Phantom replied.
Thunder boomed as lightning sliced through clouds I hadn’t even noticed gathering. A storm was swallowing up the moons, and the wind swelled, making my cheeks freeze. Instinctively, I got up, and Raphael joined me as we turned to the east. Something was coming.