The Last Beacon

XLIX

"Reverus?" Sascha asked, "what has he got to do with this?"

"It's not involving him as such," Decius elaborated, "it's more to do with what he left behind."

Sascha furrowed her eyebrows, questioning where he was going with the conversation.

What has he left behind? I haven't heard of him leaving anything in this world upon his death. Well, nothing except—

"The urn," she whispered to herself in realisation.

"That's right," Decius said, clearly having heard her, "that urn is the easiest way to turn yourself around."

"How does that help us? Am I supposed to use it to speak to Reverus again? Is he the one to help me?" She asked.

"Well, no. After he spoke to you, the spirits decided that he had said too much, and they are preventing him from speaking to you further. At least, that's what he told me," Decius explained.

"You've spoken to him?" Sascha questioned.

"Yes," he responded, "before I made my appearance in the dwarven throne room. I felt the pull to it, as I am sure you did as well. He talked to me about you, and he told me to not give up hope. He told me to tell you to not give up hope. The world is changing, and so are we. However, change is not necessarily a bad thing. Well, what I'm trying to say is that just because you can feel yourself changing, nothing is permanent. Like I said, I know we have a shot now, because you chose to push past your own boundaries to save my life. We may have felt that our chances were next to impossible, but that's not true anymore. Reverus knew that, and so do I."

"You know something I don't." Sascha stated blankly.

"Well, yes. I had a vision, of sorts. I only get them when something big is about to happen. In this case, I had one the night before I turned up at the Iron Mountain. It showed me things I couldn't believe at the time, but it didn't show me everything. I saw that you would kill Mortimalus, and I saw myself giving you the memory of our mother. I also saw something else, I saw this moment right now, and what is about to happen. When I woke from the vision, I felt the strong pull to the urn, and so I went. I never expected to see our grandfather when I opened it, but I did. It felt... fitting that he was sitting beneath a willow tree. Those trees represent many things, but above all, they represent balance and withstanding the most challenging obstacles. Before I even saw him, I felt like he was sending a message to me, a good omen. A sign that everything would turn out alright. And pairing that with my vision, I'm fairly certain that it really will turn out in our favour," he said.

"What did you see? What's about to happen?" Sascha asked, increasingly growing more apprehensive.

"Well, after I brought back Laurenz, I knew what I had to do. Before we set off to find you, we went back down the passage and retrieved the urn. The dwarves have no use for it anymore, as you're the last of us. You're the last person that will ever be able to open it, so it seemed fitting that it would be the thing that helped you," Decius explained.

With that, Laurenz took his pack off his shoulders and opened it, carefully lifting the object out. As soon as the black urn had been drawn out into the open, a strong feeling washed over Sascha; a powerful pull to it, like the one she felt back in the room with the statue.

Judging from the look on Decius's face, he also felt it. Concentration was etched on his face, and his gaze was blank, as if he were fighting off the feeling.

With difficulty, Sascha tore her eyes away from the urn and suppressed the nagging sensation that told her to open it. She felt vulnerable in that moment and hesitated.