CHAPTER 6: A CASE TO BE SOLVED

"My Lords," the priestess, seeing them approaching the altar, bowed deeply in greeting. "Apologies for having you come to this humble place," she said. Her white hair, hidden in the hood of her cape, framing her wrinkled face. Her eyes were dark and flickered with turbulence.

"No worries," Mavi waved his hands casually and walked around the small temple. "What do you need us for?" he asked. He knew it would be troublesome, so he wanted to get it done immediately.

"My name is Julia, the high priestess of Italy," she straightened her back and started speaking. Her voice was soft but firm. She stood tall at the altar while Mavi and Allerick sat down leisurely in one of the benches Mavi had cleaned with a bit of his magic. "I will not take too much of your time," she said and she presented a transparent globe, not much bigger than a softball. It floated to the middle of the room before emitting a bright silver light and showed them a recorded scene.

The ball was the overseeing globe, people called it. It worked pretty much like a video camera. It usually came in sets. So, if the priestess had one, the rest of the globe must have been distributed to other priestesses in other regions. They were connected to each other and it could record things and transmit them to all the other globes. It was very convenient to use since it required neither electricity nor internet.

Mavi and the rest of the immortals also each had one globe to make it easier to communicate when there was no signal on their phone. It was quite convenient.

"The recording is from the priestess stationed in one of the smallest villages in Rome," Julia continued on, "we received this almost a week ago," she said as the recording started playing.

At first Mavi and Allerick could see nothing but the darkness of the forest at night time. Even the moon hanging low couldn't illuminate the entirety of the dense forest. But they could hear voices. A lot of them. The globe recording the scene seemed to be held by someone who was trembling uncontrollably, as the picture kept shaking, giving Allerick and Mavi a headache.

The scene soon changed as whoever was holding it ran out of the forest and along the pathway that brought them to the village. They could hear many more footsteps following. The globe was then held high, as the entered the village, showing the people around it. But the village itself was eerily dark and quiet. Only the people who were shown in the globe could be heard. Not even animals and insects seemed to be present.

The globe showed the faces of the people in the vicinity. All of whom looked especially terrified as their voices clashed against one another, trying to make their argument.

They were priestesses. Some were young, and some were much older. But they all looked terrified. The oldest priestess was holding the globe, and she stared at it as they moved swiftly into the temple on the hill behind the small village as she was trying to explain the situation.

"High Priestess, we have no idea what we have just encountered. As we have reported earlier in the month, the deaths were all connected to the World Beyond. We just had no clue as to how and why," panting, the priestess said. Her wrinkled face contorted as she kept glancing back and forth between the globe and behind her.

The priestesses made it into the temple and some managed to barricade the door while the others were frantically trying to get the head priestess' attention, asking about what they should do. The old priestess was ignoring the young priestess, still talking into the globe.

"What about the villagers?" they could hear Julia's voice inquiring.

The head priestess turned to the door, trying to gauge the situation before hurriedly saying, "We have evacuated the rest of the healthy villagers. But we had no choice but to leave the sick villagers with us here. We also had no resources to even find out what creature is tormenting the village. We beg of you to come and help us," and that was the end of the priestess' words, for then someone screamed at the top of their lungs, startling the priestess into looking up.

The scene then went chaotic. The globe was probably out of the priestess' hands as it rolled aimlessly before everything went dark as the screams grew louder. They could also hear Julia's voice shouting commands amidst the chaos before it went completely dark.

The connection was broken.

Julia sighed with sorrow as she brought the globe back into her robe. "I have dispatched a team there, but they came back empty handed. The village was shrouded in a thick fog. Poisonous fog. We have never encountered such fogs before and we had neither the knowledge nor the ability to dispel it," Julia explained further.

A complete silence fell over the temple as Mavi and Allerick were lost in thought. The driver, still anxious, couldn't help but to pinch himself so as to not disturb them. The priestess, meanwhile, was staring at the two with hope in her eyes. However, the little bit of ray she had couldn't hide her exhaustion and loss.

Allerick stood up then and looked at Julia, "bring me everything you have on the matter and have it delivered to our room. I will look over it after dinner," he said.

"Thank you, My Lord," after a relieved sigh, Julia bowed again and gestured toward the driver to take them to the dining room.

It was indeed dinner time, and although the two immortals no longer need food for survival, they enjoyed normalcy. And having dinner, to them, was more of a habit than necessity.

As they walked back into the castle and towards the dining room, Allerick asked Mavi, "should we inform the others?"

"Just text them," Mavi said, waving his hand dismissively. "Report more when we know what we're going to deal with. We don't want to alarm them too soon. Especially when Amaya is back. They are bound to panic more often than not," he added after a while with a sigh.

"Okay," Allerick said and took out his phone to inform the others that he and Mavi were going to take on a problem before dealing with their own things. Allerick then put away his phone to find Mavi was grinning at him from his side. "What?" he asked.

"I just like it when you obediently listen to me," Mavi said and chuckled, nudging Allerick's shoulder with his own.

"When did I not listen to you?" scoffing, Allerick avoided Mavi's gaze. His ears and the back of his neck stained red with embarrassment. At that, Mavi only chuckled. He could list all the times he was driven crazy for having Allerick not listen to him and went off to be heroic instead, resulting in many injuries on Allerick's part and a lot of hair fall on Mavi's part.