Chapter 271: Abandonment and Rebirth
Ruger and Layden leaned against the experiment table behind them, both staring unblinkingly at the strange sight before them.
One end of the ribbon-like ghostly glow came from an endless unknown, while the other, after breaking away from the old crone, was drawn by the threadlike forces scattered throughout the mountain hollow and cast toward the rolling mountains.
Ruger looked at the phantom image of those mountains. Though he could not see them clearly, most of those fine threads marked places they had passed through—very likely the spots where they had thrown down the small cone-shaped objects.
The ribbon-like ghostly glow trembled, like a winding stream flowing out from the unknown.
One end began in that unknown place, while the other connected to the mountains.
Once the unknown presence within the mountains, aided by some force, had completely accepted this inexplicable gift and formed that peculiar scene, the ghostly glow did not vanish from the stone chamber as Ruger had imagined it would.
The scene was like a slender stream flowing through the void toward those hazy mountains. It no longer had anything to do with this stone chamber, merely taking a detour through it.
And that bend in the stream was the old crone standing at the center of the chamber.
The old crone laughed wildly, raising both hands high. Her staff lay rolling to one side. The tiny motes of light that had previously poured into her body, along with the strange threadlike power from the mountains, were all leaving her, endlessly drilling out of her aged body and flying like fish into the ghostly glow passing by her side, flowing toward the depths of the mountains.
The old crone's state visibly continued to decline.
Trembling, she displayed her pain in all its