Underneath the Silhouette-Chapter 86: When Tremors Speak

Eirin managed another polite ’thank you’ to the Duchess, the words feeling stiff on her tongue, before she stepped back into the confines of the ducal carriage. The rich velvet lining and polished wood felt oppressive, far too small to contain the whirlwind of thoughts still raging in her mind.

Could she truly believe what she’d just heard? The Duchess’s words, so casually dropped, still echoed with an almost unbelievable clarity.

The rhythmic clatter of the horses’ hooves against the cobbled drive was the only sound breaking the heavy silence inside the carriage. Sitting in front of her, Shade was awfully quiet. He usually had a biting remark, a sarcastic remark, or at least a restless fidget.

Now, he was small, still bundle, his fever-flushed cheek pressed against the window, gazing out at the blur of trees. His unusual stillness made Eirin’s own throat clench, and any urge to speak to him evaporated.

’I don’t want this,’ she thought. ’What if he gets angry if I talk to him? What if this new, unexpected information about him is something he’d rather keep hidden, and my questions just provoke him further?’

Eirin knew all too well how temperamental Shade could be, how easily his sharp tongue could last out. The last thing she needed on this critical, time-sensitive mission was to reignite their constant bickering, especially now, with so much at stake.

The very air around him seemed to ripple with a suppressed energy, a coiled tension that even his fever couldn’t completely dampen.

Seeing how quiet the young man was made Eirin wonder, with a fresh pang of concern, if he was still suffering from the lingering effects of the nymph’s magic and the persistent fever, or if his silence was a direct reaction to the Duchess’s words, though he’d seemed too daze to fully comprehend them at the time.

Eirin didn’t even know if she could entirely trust or believe what the Duchess had so kindly, yet so shockingly, revealed.

The teenage girl chose to live with the tense, unspoken silence, the only constant companion to the rhythmic sway of their journey as their carriage continued its steady progress away from the ducal manor.

Then, without warning, the carriage halted. Not a gentle, gradual stop, but an abrupt, jarring lurch that sent Eirin sprawling, tumbling sideways across the plush seat until she collided with the opposite wall just beside Shade Cromwell. A small yelp escaped her lips, quickly stifled.

"Talk about dramatic," Shade muttered.

"That’s your first sentence of the day?" Eirin looked at him in disbelief.

"I apologize, lads, this is the farthest the carriage could reach!" the coachman’s gruff voice bellowed from outside, cutting through the sudden stillness.

Eirin pushed herself upright, rubbing her bruised shoulder and peered out the window. Her eyes went wide in shock, her mouth falling open in a silent gasp. "What in the world?"

The familiar, well-worn path they had taken earlier with the Duke and Duchess was no longer there. In its place was a chaotic, impassable jumble of massive rocks, boulders the size of small carts, and splintered tree trunks.

It looked as if some colossal hand had simply scooped up a chunk of the mountain and dropped it squarely onto their road, completely obliterating any trace of the path. The only way to get over to the other side, to continue their journey to the town of Grimsby and then the Slumbering Slopes, was to climb over the newly formed, treacherous obstacle.

The scale of the destruction was unnerving, far beyond what any natural occurrence should cause.

"Thank you for your help," Eirin said, her voice strained but polite, as she pushed open the carriage door and stepped out, carefully navigating the uneven ground. She didn’t forget her manners, offering a genuine thank you to the coachman, whose face was etched with a mixture of frustration and apprehension.

Eirin turned to Shade, who had also disembarked, his small face still pale but his eyes more alert now. "Do you think you can climb it?" she asked, a hint of doubt in her tone, given his recent, diminished state.

Shade turned to her, his gaze holding the familiar, annoying glint of disdain, and scoffed. "I’m not dumb," he retorted, his voice raspy from disuse but still carrying its usual bite.

Before Eirin could formulate a response, he started clambering onto the lowest boulder, moving with a surprising, although subdued, agility. Each movement was precise, his small hands finding purchase on the rough surfaces, his little legs propelling him upward with an effortless grace that concealed his current condition.

’Wow, he’s like a small, furious mountain goat,’ the teenage girl thought in awe. Eirin sighed, then followed the young man, carefully assessing the handholds and footholds. She thought if she could remove the rocks using her Flair, her innate magical ability, but she wasn’t that great at it yet, especially not for a feat of this magnitude.

Eirin’s control was still beginner’s, too unrefined for such a precise, large-scale manipulation of the wind. The effort would likely leave her drained and expose their abilities unnecessarily.

The sun was at its peak, a golden orb searing down from a cloudless sky. They weren’t wearing their formal Academy uniforms, which would have been impractical for this kind of unexpected trek. Instead, they were dressed in normal, sturdy travel clothes—simple tunics, trousers, and practical boots—that, while comfortable, offered little protection against the elements or the sharp edges of the rocks.

’Wow, does the Duchess have a power to foresee things?’ Eirin thought as she looked at her clothes.

On their way to the town of Grimsby, Eirin noticed how messy the place had become. It wasn’t just the landslide here; farther down, closer to where the town should be, the ground itself seemed disturbed.

It was as if someone had deliberately, repeatedly thrown colossal rocks everywhere, leaving behind deep gouges and scattered debris that shouldn’t exist in a natural forest setting. Which was, of course, quite impossible, unless a giant truly lived nearby, or something of similar, immense power.

"What in the world..." Eirin murmured, her voice barely a whisper of awe and growing dread.

Her mouth hung open, her breath catching in her throat, witnessing the town itself. The houses that had once been covered with colorful, cheerful paints, their facades boasting intricate carvings and vibrant murals, were all destroyed. Reduced to splintered wood, shattered stone, and torn thatch, they lay in desolate, pathetic piles of debris.

It was as if a monstrous hand had swept through, crushing everything in its path. No human figures were seem moving among the ruins, nor were there any bodies lying on the debris-strewn ground. The silence was chilling, an unnatural void in a place that should have hummed with life.

"I don’t think we’ll be getting any answers right now," Eirin said, the words heavy with growing alarm. "I wonder what could have possibly happened here?"

Before Eirin could even fully reach where Shade stood, a low rumble started, deep and reverberating, coming from somewhere beneath the earth. The ground began shaking violently, trembling beneath her feet, causing Eirin to stumble, frantically reaching for something—anything—to hold onto, but there was nothing solid.

The debris shifted, threatening to send her tumbling.

"Hey! Hey!" a voice suddenly shouted, strained with urgency, cutting through the growing roar of tremor.

Eirin whipped her head around, her eyes darting to the direction of the voice. There, amidst the fractured ground, she saw a young man, a villager, waving his hand frantically at them from the relative safety of a large, partially collapsed building.

Without thinking, driven by an instinct to protect, she grabbed Shade’s small hand, her fingers closing around his surprisingly firm palm, and pulled him, almost dragged him, towards where the young man was signaling.

Just as they reached the edge of the more stable ground, the tremor abruptly stopped, the shaking receding as quickly as it had begun. The sudden stop of movement, however, caused Eirin to lose her balance, her foot catching on a jagged piece of debris.

Shade’s small hand, which, despite his size, held Eirin’s arm with surprising strength, keeping her upright.

’Wow,’ Eirin thought in awe, a fleeting moment of surprise overcoming her fear. ’How is he able to do that being in that small body?’ she wondered.

She didn’t know, couldn’t possibly fathom, how much the young man was actually holding back, struggling desperately to keep his façade of lingering illness and diminished power. In truth, even his immense strength, the very essence of his Flair, had left him, a cruel joke of Hebe’s curse.

"What happened here?" Eirin asked the people, her voice still trembling slightly from the tremor as she continued looking around the devastated town. As if summoned by her words, other people began cautiously emerging from what appeared to be the town chief’s house, a larger, sturdier structure that had seemingly withstood the worst of the destruction.

They must have all sought refuge there, huddled together, a small, terrified community.

"The bounty hunters," the town chief, a grizzled old man with eyes wide with fear, answered, his voice raspy, "they disturbed Girak’s slumber. And now he is in rage. His anger causes the tremor, shaking the very earth with his monstrous prowess." He gestured vaguely towards the Slumbering Slopes, his hand trembling.

Read 𝓁at𝙚st chapters at (f)re𝒆we(b)novel.com Only