Grimalkin exhaled slowly and shook her head, exhausted, muttering something under her breath that sounded vaguely like a prayer.
"House-friend," she said finally, almost fondly. "It seems the spell has found what it was searching for."
Grimalkin straightened, leaning forward to peer into the bowl she had prepared before.
Her eyes unfocused, lips parting slightly as if she were peering through a window only she could see, though if Sonder wanted, she could also try and peer through, but she decided to wait.
"There are many shards," Grimalkin said.
"How many?"
"I can't be certain," the woman admitted, brow furrowing. "At least ten… maybe twelve. Each faint, scattered across the world. But I can only follow the thread to one at a time."
"To which did the spell go?"
Grimalkin's gaze lingered on the bowl again. "To the closest it could find. West, several weeks of travel, judging by how long the spell took." It ends somewhere… damp. Below ground, perhaps. Old stone, dripping water. A dungeon perhaps."
"A dungeon?" Sonder repeated.
Grimalkin nodded once. "That's what it looks like. "And-" she hesitated, seeing something else, "someone's watching it. I can't tell who. The scrying doesn't reach that far, and the figure stays just beyond its reach. "All I see and feel is the shard, and that presence nearby."
Sonder frowned slightly, though not from fear. "You can't see more?"
Grimalkin tried again. "The person I see… They aren't quite human. They have something… savage to them. Perhaps beast-folk? And… No," Grimalkin said with a small shake of her head. "It's too distant. My reach ends there. If I moved closer, perhaps, the spell would stretch further, but I won't leave Gloam."
Sonder lowered her head. She had somehow expected more from Grimalkin. But she was just a person who knew two spells.
"My work, and I, stay here," Grimalkin said firmly.
There was a small pause.
"I see," Sonder said quietly. "Then… could you at least teach me the spell you used? The words. 'Sag Ere Sha,' was it?"
Grimalkin looked at her for a long time before answering. "No."
"No?"
"It's not something that can be taught." Grimalkin's voice took on some of the Thole roughness. "The words are not given, they're found. Learned by the soul, not the tongue."
Sonder nodded slowly, almost as if she had expected that. "I thought as much."
Grimalkin raised an eyebrow. "Have you learned the words?"
"Two," Sonder said.
That surprised Grimalkin, but she said no more.
Sonder reached across the table and picked up the shard.
The moment her fingers closed around it, the shadow over the room seemed to lessen.
Grimalkin's eyes followed it like a hawk's, her body leaning forward before she even realized it, her lips parted just slightly, as though some buried instinct urged her to reach for it.
But she didn't.
Instead, she exhaled slowly and leaned back again, pressing her hands flat to the table.
"Ah," she murmured. "Pity. One can't help but want to… study it. Just a little longer."
Sonder slipped the shard back into the fold of her robe. She had a few things to go on.
Far west, underground, and beast-folk.
She held the shard in her pocket and whispered softly, testing the sounds. "Sag… Ere… Sha."
Nothing happened.
She frowned, then repeated it under her breath, altering the rhythm, the tone, the intention, half speaking to the shard, half listening to herself.
Still nothing. She didn't even know what one of the words meant.
She adjusted her robe slightly, letting the sigil of Nesh catch the light again. "Thank you, Grimalkin."
The woman waved a hand as though to brush off the thanks.
"I'll come back if I need your help again," Sonder said. "But hopefully not too soon."