Ms. Edna picked up her Gladstone bag and unbuckled it, bringing out the sketched image of the maggot-faced man she had kept inside to protect it from being soaked wet by the rain just like Elmer’s other materials.

Elmer had had to sacrifice his paper bag and the things they’d held in order to keep his waist bag safe from being dampened by the rain. He could not have afforded to let water make its way into his revolver, so he had used the paper bag as something of a canopy over his waist bag when he had highlighted from the carriage a few minutes past.

Well, even though the money he’d spent was hurting him inside, the ingredients didn’t matter as much any longer since Ms. Edna seemingly had no need for them for what she was about to do. He had kept them at the entranceway in that regard, just beside the house’s bin.

“The emissary,” Elmer started as Ms. Edna sat down on the closest cushion to the table. “Is it the same thing that comes forth for everyone?”

His question was based purely on the curiosity that had grown in him due to how everyone with knowledge on the supernatural had said that abilities were distributed based on a person’s unique characteristic or novelty. So he wondered if summoning an emissary worked in that same way. Maybe if he tried his he would get some other thing that wasn’t a skeleton’s hand with a weird fleshy palm.

“No. Everyone gets a different being appearing to them,” Ms. Edna answered while her eyes were firmly placed upon the sketch in her hands, giving Elmer the impression that she was studying it vividly. He wondered what method she wanted to use for the divination, seeing as she had set no altar or done no weird preparations.

“Is that because of the novelty of the Ascender? A part of their unique characteristic?” He wanted to confirm if this was actually the reason. Settling for answers that still had questions lurking in them was not the way he should be treading any longer.

“Precisely,” Ms. Edna said. “I’m glad Eddie told you about that as well. It would have been a lot to explain at this moment.”

That reply immediately had Elmer plunged into another thought that he’d already had times before. It was one that was filled with inquisition on what Ms. Edna’s abilities might be, but he knew better than to ask her of things like that. If she wanted him to know, she would tell him. And since that had not been the case yet, he’d probably have to wait until a situation was required for both of them to make known their assets to each other.

He’d already made a guess due to her prior action of going into a place without light, and returning with objects that can only be seen due to illumination, that her heightened sense was sight, but her usage of spectacles was not letting Elmer sit firmly on that speculation.

A person with a heightened sense of sight should not be in need of glasses to see. Unless he was wrong?

Ms. Edna turned to him then. “Now, all your questions will have to wait. I’m going to find out the corrupted one’s location.”

Elmer’s brows dropped at that, but he kept his mouth shut and just allowed himself to watch what method she was about to use for the process.

Ms. Edna took in a very long and deep breath before setting the paper on the table directly before her. She clasped her fingers together, taking a praying gesture, and with a graceful close of her eyelids she muttered,

“Open your journal to me, oh Lord Chronos. Let me see what has been recorded in time, let me hear those words that have long passed, let me connect the threads of reality and find myself wandering through that which should have been forgotten or unknown to me. At this moment, for this moment, let my being drown in the Whispers of Time.”

Elmer inhaled sharply, bracing himself as he anticipated whatever bizarre scenario would come forth from Ms. Edna’s prayer—as they always did. But a few seconds passed, and all that was in the parlor was silence. There were no outbursts of soft, uncanny winds. No foggy smoke. The flames even remained as they were. It seemed normal.

Until, all of a sudden, Ms. Edna’s head jerked backward onto the upper frame of the couch she was seated on, and a bit too sharply that it was almost as though a brawny person had sent a straight jab onto her forehead.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

It had happened so bizarrely that Elmer had been forcefully shaken, causing him to take a step backward in fear that she might have lost her life.

And worse, that was not all.

Her eyes had sunk into her head, leaving only a complete white staring up at the ceiling. And following that action was her head suddenly moving in a very fast motion, seemingly as though it was being vibrated at a high speed, leaving blurs of her facial features in its wake.

Elmer did not know what to do. Had her divination gone wrong? Was he to step in and help her in whatever way? Or was this all part of it?

The supernatural and what it did really frightened him. He could not even correctly predict if something was happening as expected or not.

What in the world was he to do now?

At that moment, Elmer glimpsed narrow brooks of blood trickling down Ms. Edna’s fast moving and blurry face. Luckily, or eerily to be very precise, they didn’t spray about, but it was then he knew that she was in pain.

He gritted his teeth and took a step forward, of the mind to maybe shake her until she woke up, or try different things until something happened.

But just as he did, so did Ms. Edna’s vibration suddenly cease, her eyes abruptly returning back to where they were meant to be.

She turned to look at Elmer who was of a startled countenance and drenched in a little bit of sweat, with one foot in front of the other, and smiled weakly, almost like she had not just fed his eyes with a crazy scenario.

Elmer knew he had not mistaken what had happened, afterall, her nostrils still had the trademark of flowing blood to prove that.

He swallowed a spit.

“Your head,” Elmer started to say after clearing his throat. “It was… I don’t know how to put it. Are you sure you’re okay? What was that?”

Ms. Edna took her time as she brought out a handkerchief from the side pouch of her Gladstone bag and wiped her nose clean of the blood about it.

“My ability. Whispers of Time,” she told him, a bit too casually for his taste that he remained silent. Ms. Edna raised her two feline eyebrows at the confused reaction Elmer had. “Surely, Eddie did not just tell you about novelty and leave out the part that ascending into the Lower Echelon causes you to have a unique ability bestowed upon you by the pathway, right?”

Elmer shook his head. “No, he did, he told me everything. It’s just that… Why did you look like you were in pain? I thought you were dying.”

Ms. Edna put down her handkerchief.

“You see, Mr. Elmer, in this our world, getting gifted with abilities is anything but good. Probably, the best thing we ever got from drinking the essence elixir is the heightened physical characteristics our bodies now have; well, along with the other basic things we’re able to do for embracing the supernatural. But when we go further into the deeper parts of this bizarre world, we have to pay the price for that.

“My ability, Whispers of Time, allows me to see the past events of a person I focus my mind on for a certain period of time. It could date back to a few seconds ago, or even years. It’s up to me how far I want to take it.

“But my body is still that of a human. It doesn’t matter if it has been heightened, it can only take so much.”

Ms. Edna pointed at her bloodstained handkerchief.

“That there is as a result of my constant battle with the thousands of agonizing cries I heard in the span of ten seconds while I searched the past events of the corrupted one we’re seeking. If I had gone even a bit longer, I would have gone mad, or even worse, died. Like I said, my body can only take so much.”

That is a bit too great of a risk for using the ability… Making use of my heightened hearing causes me to fall asleep, in a very dangerous battle that could mean my life… And now she’s hinting that it gets even worse once I awaken my main ability after ascending…? What sort would I get, what would it cost me…?

Elmer was curious, but surprisingly to him, it was not for the ability he would get from the Pathway of Time, it was for the one from the pathway he hated the most.

Ms. Edna instantly noticed the uneasy contortion that had taken over Elmer’s face, and it was then that she put aside her stern expression and smiled.

“But of course, victory is ours. I found out where the corrupted one currently is. He’s at the docks in Sailport.”

Elmer’s eyes sparkled immediately, and slowly but surely, his body relaxed, pushing off all the tension that had been draped over it. He sighed.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” Elmer told Ms. Edna, and she nodded at him in thanks for his concerns. “What next?”

“We wait for Eddie.” She leaned back on the couch, pinched her eyes shut, and heaved out an exhale. “This is your chance, Mr. Elmer. Ask all the questions you have for me. Go on.”