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

34. Rage

Lili had already been having a terrible sort of day. How could she not be, when Robert had plans and power and was searching for the chance to hurt them. When her mother was in a coma and they didn't know how to fix her. When she herself was bubbling with unstable magic and haunted by nightmares. And then, the Countess had shown up, and seeing the horrible woman nearly put her over the edge. But Lili had reigned her anger in, not wanting to lose control again.

But now she was seeing red once more, for two reasons. One, she knew what the scroll was and she hated how powerful it was making Robert, how it was helping him hurt her family. Two, the Countess had proved her knowledge useful, proved they were in need of her help.

If Lili hated being hunted by Robert, she absolutely despised that her family had been put in such a desperate place that they needed help from the Countess.

The only thing reminding her to keep her cool was Eternity. Both because jumping out of the chair the two girls were sitting in would disturb her friend, something she had enough presence of mind not to do, and because the pink haired teen had just posed an important question.

What were they going to do?

Rafe was the first one to respond, "that's what we need to figure out, isn't it? What to do. I'd say we need to take Robert's power away, but-"

"He's taking other people's power and making it into weapons for him to use, not using power of his own. So we can't just take his magic or something, since it's not his magic," Emma finished.

Rafe nodded, "exactly. We need to be realistic here."

"Realistic options are limited, considering he has all the knowledge of the scroll and we don't," Gabriel mused.

"Right, but he doesn't have the whole scroll," Eternity chimed in, speaking even as the metaphorical gears in her head continued to turn, "he has four of seven pieces of it. There's still three pieces out there."

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Emma questioned.

Eternity's eyes gleamed with that same creative spark she got when she painted, ideas whirling, "if we could get those three pieces, we'd have some of the scroll's information on our side too. It could even the playing field."

"That's smart," Rafe agreed, "but Robert's been searching for years, and he couldn't find the last three pieces. How are we supposed to find them when we're trying to outlast Robert's plans?"

"We are on a time crunch," Gabriel sighed. Robert had backed them into a corner, as much as they hated to admit it. They were being forced to play his game, and when he could strike at any moment, they didn't have time to go on long expeditions to potentially dangerous locations.

Lili bit her lip. She didn't necessarily care about the scroll or it's power - but it held secrets, secrets that could help them. It could be the only thing to tip the balance in their favor. Knowing their luck, it probably was. But finding it - that wasn't going to be easy, and it was going to involve something Lili was absolutely dreading.

Her hesitation lasted only a moment, because Lili would never turn down an opportunity to help her family, even though she would be very uncomfortable with this, "what if we could find the three remaining pieces? Would we want to?"

Rafe frowned, "I- yes. I don't like it - the scroll sounds dangerous, and the last thing we need is more danger. But it could tell us secrets we need to defeat Robert. It could tell us how to save and heal."

And there it was. The Scroll of Souls could potentially help heal Kate, and so there really was no choice. They would have to get it, because they would never let Kate suffer when they had a chance to fix things.