Time's Tragedies- The Books Of Beginning [2]

74. Designed To Fail

"Lili, please, cut it out," Rafe said as the girl continued pacing back and forth as she had been doing for the past twenty minutes, while her family members gathered different things.

"Sorry," Lili muttered, though she didn't sound apologetic at all. She came to her father's side and looked at the table, Abby and Jake on the other side. A notepad with a list of locations was there, a map of the globe was spread out, and a scrying bowl was set up on one corner. 

"We're going to get Eternity back," Rafe swore to his eldest daughter, "we just need to find her first. Fortunately, there are multiple options. I can try scrying, but that's not always accurate and we'll keep it as a last resort. What I was thinking is this - the chances are high that she's been taken to one of Robert's strongholds, we just have to reveal which one. I got a list of those from the Scroll of Souls. If not, I should still be able to pinpoint her location on the map with a tracking spell. I just need an object of hers, or a lock of her hair or something. If it's an object, it should have meaning to her."

Lili nodded, "I'll go get her hairbrush and a few other things."

The blonde ran up the stairs as fast as her legs could carry her and skidded into the room she shared with Eternity. Eternity's hairbrush, twined with curly pink hairs, was sitting atop the dresser and Lili snatched it up, before also grabbing Eternity's favorite paintbrush, and, after a moment's hesitation, the picture of Eternity's parents that she had been shown before. If any object held enough sentimentality, the picture was sure to do it, especially since the friendship bracelet Eternity normally wore was broken and lost now.

"Here you go!" Lili shouted, practically shoving the objects into her father's hands. She was incredibly eager to find where Eternity had been taken and rain hell upon Robert Lloyd until she was recovered. Lili had never felt such bloodlust before, not even with her early encounters against Robert or the Countess. For the first time, the anger didn't scare her, rather, it purred in her chest and made her feel stronger, ready to rip apart every monster that stood between her and the pink haired girl that she so adored.

Rafe nodded, concentrating, while his three children watched on with baited breath as he plucked a magenta curl of hair out of the brush. His magic traveled down the strand, swirling green and shadowy around it. His eyes fluttered shut as he concentrated, hovering his other hand over the papers, a spark growing at his fingertip, guiding him in the direction of Eternity. Lili leaned forward as her father's finger moved towards Asia, but the magic fizzled out before the precise location could be found.

Rafe's eyes opened and he sighed, "the DNA connection is decent, but it's not enough. I'm gonna try my luck with one of the objects."

He repeated his actions with the paintbrush and the picture. The paintbrush yielded nothing of help, only causing Rafe's hand to hover over the list of locations affiliated with Robert that had been gleaned from the Scroll of Souls. Jake deduced that between the hair and the paintbrush, the tracking spell was pointing to a location on the map that was both on the list and in Asia, but that still left them with at least five different options that they didn't have time to journey to and inspect individually. So Rafe had tried the picture, only to find the tracker veering off course, pointing to Mexico, probably because of the connection of Eternity's mother to that place, the Wibberly children guessed. The emotions connected to the picture were too focused to be a good tracker of Eternity herself and where she was in the world.

"I can try scrying, then," Rafe said, refusing to give up even though he was becoming impatient, "a lot of the locations on the list are ones that Robert repurposed from the Dire Magnus. I might recognize something."

"Wait!" Abby said, "before you do that, I think we need to let Lili look at the map."

Jake turned to his sister, "let Lili look at the map? Why?"