The past couple of days were mostly spent helping Regind and, when one or the other started getting too distracted, went to see if Nana or Papa needed anything. Lynette was also sometimes responsible for updating Ragnis and Loraena on Regind’s progress, though she never heard anything about their own. Overall, her role in all of this was pretty minimal—but honestly, she didn’t want to have a bigger part to play in it. She knew she wouldn’t be capable of doing much more, not in the ways all the others could.
Regind was excited when she announced that she thought she had done it, that she’d made something she had a feeling would help. She ushered Lynette out of the house quickly enough that she had barely had time to understand what was happening.
“Do you even know where they’ll be?” Lynette asked as they walked through the street. She didn’t know which she wanted to focus on more: the fact it was early in the morning, or that Regind had to have stayed up overnight to be ready this early. “For all we know they’re at their homes, sleeping or eating breakfast, like normal people.”
“Oh, I know where they are!” Regind responded confidently. “The place I’m quite certain they haven’t left!”
Before Lynette could question where that was, Regind turned to knock on the door to the church. A tired, middle-aged man opened the door, and blinked a couple of times.
“Good morning, Regind. You’re peppier than usual,” he observed cautiously. “Might I dare suggest that you’re… not here for accidental arson?”
“Not today! Are Ragnis and Loraena lurking somewhere in there?”
“‘Lurking’ may not be the word I would use for it, though I suppose I can’t claim it to exactly be an insatiable thirst for knowledge, either. But yes. I don’t think Loraena’s left since they first came, in fact.” He stepped back and gestured them inside. “You’ll probably find them in the archives. You know where that is, I assume?”
“Right across from the sanctuary, right?”
“Mhm.”
“Thanks!”
Regind took the lead inside and through the church. The entrance was, at least, a lot less grand than the size of the building suggested. Lynette barely had time to wonder if there was more beyond what she was seeing before she reached the archives—and the fact was immediately confirmed.
It was practically a library, more than just a couple of books and records she would’ve expected for the small town. She assumed it probably was closer to a library, getting brief glimpses of some of the books’ titles as they passed them.
They rounded a corner to find where Ragnis and Loraena were—though Loraena definitely looked like the more interested of the two. In fact, she was invested enough in whatever she was reading that she didn’t seem to realize they were there until Ragnis said something.
“Hey! Come up with something?” He gestured to the small bag Regind was holding. “You’ve got to have something fun in there, right?”
Regind nodded. “I think I figured it out.”
She immediately had all of Loraena’s attention. “Really?”
“I’m guessing you haven’t found anything, if you’re this excited over something little…” Lynette couldn’t help but mumble.
Ragnis shrugged. “Yeah, we’ve practically been living here, but we haven’t gotten any closer to figuring out what happened. It seems weird that no one had bothered to record it anywhere but there’s not any evidence saying anything else. Not even that the church had restricted or tried to hide that kind of stuff.”
“As far as we can tell, she was there one day, and gone the next,” Loraena sighed. “Nothing says anything beyond that. I still don’t get how someone as involved as she was could just… disappear, without anyone caring to consider why…” She shook her head. “But back to you. You really think you have something that’ll help, Regind?”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Yes!” Regind pulled out a charm from the bag. “This should be able to project and clearly show memories, no matter how blurry they might be to the person themselves. It worked with me, anyway. Clear enough it might as well have been real. It should work on Astyu, too.”
Loraena stood up to hug her. “You’re the best, Regind! I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She stepped back, glanced at Lynette and Ragnis, and corrected, “All of you.”
Ragnis got up, too, though it was a lot more casual. He started gathering all the books and papers into one place. “So here’s the part where I ask the question that someone has to ask: what do we do now? We’ve got something that might help, but we still don’t know how to get him to use it.”
“That’s a good point,” Regind said. “It doesn’t work remotely, it would’ve been too hard to control that way—and who knows how he’s going to take seeing it. I mean, I guess it doesn’t look threatening, but who knows after how he treated us last time…”
“I don’t know, not really,” Loraena sighed. “But… I have a hope that all we have to do is talk. Maybe if he understands why we’re there, and that we only want to talk, he’ll let us. I think… he wants to understand what happened to her as much as we want to help him do it.” She gained some more confidence as she said, “He’ll listen to us. I know he will.”
“Well, if you think we’re ready, then we can clean up here and head to the estate,” Ragnis said. “Regind, would you mind helping a bit? I’m afraid Lynette won’t be familiar enough to know where half this stuff goes.”
“I can still try,” Lynette offered. “Regind can show me.”
Regind nodded. “Mhm! Then as soon as we finish here, we’ll talk to Astyu again.”
With all four of them helping, they were done putting everything back in a couple of minutes. On their walk to the estate, Loraena took a short detour to bring another gift of food, but otherwise they walked together in relative silence. Lynette only really felt assured in their decision because Loraena seemed to have confidence to spare—though, really, none of them knew how this would play out for a second time.
She knocked on the door to find that the door opened, not by her gentle touch, but by Astyu standing on the other side.
“How did I know you’d be here?” he mumbled.
“You were waiting for us?” Loraena must not have been able to hide her excitement. “You’re not… completely upset?”
“Mother told me that I should be nice to our guests. What do you want?”
“Can we come in? There’s something we want to show you. I still want to help.”
“I don’t want your help.”
She considered it a moment, then, “It’s going to let you see your mother again. Exactly as the last time you saw her. And you won’t have to figure it out on your own—we’ll be with you, if you want.”
He hesitated. “You’re not… going to take her away from me?”
“We’re only here to help. I promise. Let’s all head inside and Regind can show you how it works.”
He nodded and, though not gesturing them inside, didn’t stop them from following him. He went to what must’ve been the dining room. “Go on. Show me how I can see Mother.”
Regind came up and pulled out the trinket. She handed it to Astyu to let him look at it before she started explaining it to him. He slowly nodded and followed the directions, holding it close to him and whispering the words needed to activate it.
Immediately, they could all see the illusion from before—the same supposedly-reassuring words from mother to son, the same final hug. It was clearer than before, yes, but there was nothing new about it.
That is, until it faded to replace smaller, disjointed scenes—which definitely didn’t seem to be a part of the plan. Nothing was said then, but there was a story to it, too… even if the only part Lynette took away from it was a group of women, one of which being Astyu’s mother, practiced magic together. With the way Regind, Ragnis, and Loraena looked at it, though, it was definitely a little more complicated than that.
When it ended and they were truly left with nothing, Astyu took the trinket off and handed it back to Regind. He didn’t seem nearly as disappointed as Lynette would’ve expected—like he understood a bit of it, too. “Why do you want to help me so much?”
Loraena stepped up to give him the answer. “Your mother wouldn’t have wanted you to stay locked in here like this—and I know you don’t want to be either. Just… give us a chance, please. There’s a world waiting out there and I’m sure she’d love for you to see it.”
“It’s… big, though. And scary.”
“You’re right, but that’s not all. You’re not going alone.” She gestured behind her to the other three. “You have all of us.”
He glanced at each of them and managed a small smile. “Alright, I’ll… try. One step at a time, though.”
“The first is always the hardest. It’ll only get easier from here, I promise.”