Until Forever (1st draft)

Part the Twenty-Seventh

Geneva lost all sense of time. How long had she been staring at the Starheart? Minutes? Hours? Days? It wasn't simply that she was transfixed by an image of her mother. No it was the heart-wrenching expression displayed on her mother's face. She looked distraught and that, in turn, made Geneva distraught.

The image was so realistic! It wasn't like a photograph; it was three dimensional like the holograms she had seen in the Boston Museum of Science. If she turned the Starheart around in her hand she could see all sides of her mother's face. And Geneva almost thought the image moved like it was alive, but she realized it was probably an optical illusion due to the remaining smoky tendrils that drifted throughout the crystal.

The expression on her mother's face haunted her. She couldn't turn away from it. The woman looked anguished, frightened, confused to the point of panic. Geneva realized it was probably exactly how she looked herself right now. But seeing her mother's look of turmoil somehow brought clarity to her own fragile mind.

"Why does she look so...sad?" Geneva asked. A hand gently settled on her shoulder. It had to be Nellaf, but she didn't look to see. She hadn't even noticed that he had moved closer to her side.

"Come walk with me," he said. At length she looked up and saw that he was standing over her, extending a hand as an offer to help her to her feet. She accepted and he pulled her up to stand next to him at the railing. He put both hands on her shoulders.

"Ingar is built into Stormpeak Mountain. Atop it sits the sanctum of a long-dead wizard. I have learned that the Black Keys are hidden somewhere inside that structure. That is where we must go. That is where you will unlock the Starheart. I want to help you fulfill your destiny."

Geneva barely heard his words, she was lost again in the desperation of her mother's expression. Realizing he wouldn't get a response, Nellaf turned away and reached for his rucksack. Geneva still couldn't comprehend the hopelessness displayed in the Starheart. Was it because her mother was...dead? She turned to ask Nellaf about it again and caught a glimpse of something unusual yet familiar in the rucksack as he picked it up.

"Wait...what was that?" she asked.

"Pardon?" he responded.

"What do you have in the pack?"

"Nothing important," he scoffed. "Tools and supplies. Now come, let's—"

"No. I want to see what's inside," she insisted. Nellaf chuckled, then turned from her and started leading the way. Geneva lunged forward and grabbed the rucksack, yanking it off his shoulder so that it fell to the ground. An object bounced out, a long, pointed object with a barbed end that looked like some kind of weapon. She recoiled in horror as she recognized it immediately.

"That's...that's..."

"Yes it is," Nellaf said as he bent to retrieve it. "It is the horn of Steekbunk Lowbone."

There was an interminably long period of silence as he looked up at her from his crouched position, tossing the horn from hand to hand as he assessed the disruption of his plans. Geneva's mind seemed stuck in place, unable to process the interconnectedness of the unfolding events.

"I suppose the time for pretense has passed," he said at last. She stared back, still and silent.

Nellaf rose to his feet, physically transforming right before her eyes. The handsome young man was gone in a blink, replaced by the nightmarish monstrosity from the hidden room. The mesmerizing silvery eyes had become the terrifying twin craters of dark nothingness.

"Without the song of the Faerie to calm me, I would not have been able to hold the illusion much longer anyway."

"Oh...my...God..." The words slipped from Geneva's lips in a whisper.