“Hell!” Terézia reeled back from her scrying glass, a string of even more unpleasant words running through her head beyond the one that had already escaped her lips. Aoife’s fingers dug into the flesh of her shoulder as Terézia tried to quell the shakes that she could feel coming.
“What is it? What did you see?”
“Things should not be allowed to be that ugly,” Terézia said with a shudder. The hulking green thing had looked like something had blown half its face off—and then the wound had somehow frozen in the instant a shotgun blast had hit it. It was quite possibly the most unpleasant thing she’d seen in the whole of her life.
Aoife’s brows knit. “Damnation, Teca, make sense!”
“It was big and green and ugly, all right?” She shivered. “And it was heading right for the camp where your brother is. The one we’ve been watching.”
“Show me,” Aoife said, eyes wide, sounding almost breathless. Terézia stared at her for a moment before she swallowed, nodding.
“I can try, anyway.”
Aoife nodded. “That’s all I ask, Teca.”
She set her jaw and laid her hands alongside the mirror again, focusing on Phelan O’Credne again, since that was how she came upon the image in the first place. The clouds in the glass slowly began to clear, revealing the pale-faced red-head shouting and waving his arms at a knot of men and woman just beyond an open gate. Terézia winced as she shifted the focus, scything her ‘gaze’ across broken ground spattered with snow, green grass poking up here and there in thin patches.
As the creature came into view, Aoife gasped and reeled back from the table.
“Let go of it the image. Let it go!”
Terézia didn’t hesitate. Her hands flew away from the mirror and the image vanished as she sprang back, meeting Aoife’s terrified gaze over the now-blank mirror.
“What was it?” Terézia asked, feeling sick to her stomach. If she’s that afraid…
“A firbolg,” Aoife said, hands curling into tight fists. “Bloody hell, what’s one of those doing here? How did it come across?”
Gray chose that moment to burst into the small room, eyes bleary as if he’d just woken up. “I heard shouting.”
Aoife huffed a sigh and shook her head, turning toward him and laying one hand against his chest. “It’s all right,” she said with admirable calm. “Teca and I were just…looking. That’s all.”
He cast them both a dubious look before he nodded and ducked back out again. Terézia frowned.
“Why didn’t you—?”
“Because there’s nothing we can do about it,” Aoife said, shaking her head heard. “Much as I’d like to be able to help them, there’s not a damned thing I can do from this far away.”
“Are you sure?” Terézia frowned to herself. If they can throw metaphorical acid in my face, there’s got to be something we can do from this distance to help them. There has to be.
“I don’t see what we could do,” Aoife said as she slumped back into her chair.
“Think about it,” Terézia said, crossing around the table and leaning against its edge, staring at Aoife. “If they can affect me from as far away as they are, who’s to say that I—or we—can’t do the same thing?”
“Scrying doesn’t work like that,” Aoife said, voice quiet, almost lost.
Terézia set her jaw. “Maybe once upon a time it didn’t,” she said. “But today it’s going to. Are you going to help me?”
Aoife blinked at her. “How?”
“I don’t know. But I know we’ve got to try.”
For a long moment, all Aoife did was just stare at her. Finally, the other woman nodded and a ghost of a smile touched her lips. “Of course. You’re right. We have to try.”
Terézia smiled. “Aye. Now go get Gray and Kes and Wat. Let’s see what we can muster.” We’ll send that thing back to wherever it came from. Somehow. We’ve got to help her brother.
It’s the least we can do right now—and it’s the right thing to do.
We at least have to try.
I wonder how flammable a firbolg is. Scrying glass fire bolt maybe, or an unhealthy dose of poison?
I’m sure that Aoife and Teca would rather like to aneurysm it to death, perhaps?
Nah, more like a literal case of heart, burn baby, burn. One that the world’s supply of antacid will never stop.