Ashes of Vile

027

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Just A Friend With Benefits

"Chase, wake up." A hurried hand nudged him awake as he stood up fully activating his guarded self but was relieved to find it was his younger sister. Lace was rubbing her eyes seemed to have been woken up to. "What's wrong?" Chase questioned. "Abourne is here."

What? Chase said and immediately got to his feet. It seemed to be past midnight as he walked out the room and was immediately greeted with the moonlight shining through the hallways. Everyone was asleep in their own rooms. Lace and Chase, Lilac and Cassidy, Sung Mi and Zakeen. Meanwhile Maeve and Devin were in their own separate rooms. "Did you fall asleep on the couch again?" He asked Lace with slight concern. "I was reading," Lace yawned. Chase watched her enter the room instead of following him, tiredly dropping down on the other bed beside his.

Chase noticed the figure standing in the middle of the living room to be Abourne. Chase carefully approached her as though she was something suspicious to be assessed. "Chase, listen, it's Vermithis─" Chase loudly sighed and whisper-yelled, "Vermithis! You come in the middle of the night to talk to me about a fucking myth Goddess, Bo?"

"No, Chase, listen to me!" She also whisper-yelled but was cut off by Chase's even louder voice, "Listen to yourself! You sound mad, Abourne. And in the middle of lockdown? You could've been followed!" Abourne attempted to talk but was only repeatedly being interrupted by Chase's never ending scoldings, "We are staying in a fucking glass house, Abourne! These watchmen can easily find me when you lead them here. What are you thinking? You are even crazier than the believers of Ashgrim!"

"WOULD YOU JUST LISTEN TO ME?" Abourne then yelled in a regular tone which was loud enough to wake someone up. She pulled out something from her back pocket and pulled out a picture Chase had seen before. "I didn't walk many miles on winter to preach to you, Chase." She put the picture on his hand for him to examine.

Nothing had ticked off in his mind despite the picture having the most familiar thing in his life: the source. Abourne noticed his lack of catching up and instead sped it up for him, "Trusting The Dead. Another book in our library and this picture was in it." It was the picture of hands enwrapped around the gracious hands with the blue source nearly looking wicked as though in flames. Abourne put her finger at something in the picture. Chase moved towards the lamplight on the table for Lace's reading and turned it on to see it clearer. It was a ring. But not like any ordinary ring. It was the infinity ring. The same ring in Maeve's family's possession and in the visions of Inez.

"Your name will be honored for infinity." Chase whispered in the dark. Abourne nodded along with him and said with many excitement rushing through her, "Vermithis after all might not be as useless as you thought, Chase. She's the key to something."

"She's the key to everything, Bo." He said as he looked at the hands of Vermithis Ashgrim. The hands of the 'creator of Ashgrim' which many believed. She was apparently the core of Ashgrim. They believed her to be the sent savior and the God who had given them the freedom of having the privilege to live in a place like Ashgrim. Chase Creed had always thought it to be a load of crap and pointless stories to entertain everyone. He had thought her to be fake, not real. But maybe her name did mean something. And although the chances of the stories to be accurate to be extremely slim, it was undeniable that Vermithis possibly could be the symbol and sign for their ability to acquire knowledge that would lead them straight to power.

"But we already have Cassidy, Bo. Isn't that enough?"

"It isn't. No one knows a damn thing about the source. All we've done is fed the beast. We don't know what the source does. We don't know how to help Cassidy wield it. We don't know how to replicate it. We don't know how Cassidy has it in the first place. We don't know anything. We have Cassidy, but what good will she be if she had no proper guidance to rely on?"