Chapter 206: Eyes and Fingers

The medium spread the Tarot Cards into a crescent across one corner of the workbench.

"First we look at the man himself. Then we look at those behind him."

Her index finger hovered over the spread, drawing the first card from the crescent.

When she flipped the card over, Old Biggs gave an almost imperceptible flinch.

[The Hanged Man - Upright]

A young man hung upside down by one foot from a T-shaped wooden cross, his free leg bent into a figure four, his hands bound behind his back.

The Hanged Man's expression was supposed to be serene—a face painted over and over for centuries.

But right now, hovering over the tarp, the Hanged Man's eyes were closed.

Shut tight. The card refused to let anyone see what it was looking at.

"He didn't resist being hollowed out," Mrs. MacNeil said.

"He cooperated with the process. Cooperated to the point that even he felt it was exactly what should be done."

Richard thought of the "Chorus" member they had captured alive in the cave last night.

"This is exactly what should be done."

It was the exact same sentiment.

The medium moved her finger to the second card.

[The Moon, Reversed]

The inverted moon hung between two towers.

A dog and a wolf howled up at the moon, but with the card inverted, the path became a slope leading from the underground straight up to the moon.

"He was deceived, and more than once," the medium said.

"There were at least three layers of deceivers."

"The outermost layer told him to 'escape his immediate suffering.'"

"The middle layer told him, 'You are the chosen one.'"

"And the innermost layer... told him, 'What you do will be remembered.'"

Richard remembered the serene smile on the Chief Responder's face just before he died yesterday.

That smile hadn't meant "I won" at all.

It meant "I will be remembered."

Remembered by that thing at the bottom of the pit. To have his name called, even if only once.

The medium moved to the third card.

[The Hierophant Reversed]

The inverted Hierophant sat between two pillars, his triple crown slipping from his head, while the two small figures he had blessed turned their heads away.

"This is the one who showed him the way."

"In the Echo Society, they have a 'Mentor.'"

"That 'Mentor' isn't necessarily the person at the very core of this. He is more of a... relay."

She drew the fourth card.

[The Tower, Upright]

Lightning struck the spire, and two figures plummeted from the top.

The vertical bolt tore the tower open from the top down, the blast blowing its roof clean off.

Richard frowned instinctively at the sight of the card.

The Tower was one of the most ominous Tarot Cards, signaling an impending, unavoidable collapse.

The medium held her hand over The Tower for a few seconds.

Beside Richard, Old Biggs inhaled sharply.

The medium raised a hand, gesturing for silence.

She drew a fifth card but didn't flip it, placing it face-down above The Tower.

She drew a sixth and placed it face-down above the fifth.

Finally, a seventh card went face-down above the sixth.

At the right end of the crescent, she had stacked three unrevealed cards like a small, three-story tower.

"Senior Sister," Old Biggs whispered, his voice low. "Are you trying to dig deeper?"

"Yes."

"...Should we just drop it?"

"I'll try just once."

The medium held her right hand over the stack of three face-down cards.

Her fingers lost their relaxed curve, pulling tight.

She was using the entire deck to knock on that deeper connection behind the Chief Responder.

The medium muttered something under her breath.

On the table, the top card of the face-down stack peeled back a corner on its own.

Mrs. MacNeil's eyes widened instantly.

Old Biggs's face went completely pale.

"Senior Sister, pull back!"

Standing outside the silver line, Richard saw that the card's original face had been replaced by pure white.

An eye appeared on that blank face.

Standing vertically on the card, the eye slowly opened toward Mrs. MacNeil.

It had no pupil, no eyeball even—just the sheer sensation of being watched.

It stripped the act of looking down to its core, discarding the need for physical organs and leaving only the purest essence of being seen.

An Inspiration warning exploded in Richard's chest.

This was clearly a deliberately set trap.

The entity behind the Chief Responder had planted a reverse hook in him from the very day he was taken as a "tool."

Any medium who tried to divine the Chief Responder's true name or his backer's identity would follow that path and hand their own Inspiration right over to the other side.

Mrs. MacNeil froze, her left hand hovering over the cards, her right hand instinctively pressing against the Bone Bracelet on her wrist.

Richard realized it instantly: she was pinned by that gaze. She couldn't move.

Any movement would be interpreted by the entity as a "response."

And once she "responded," her entire deck and her entire Ether Micro-circulation would be dragged over by that eye along the connection.

Richard instinctively wanted to act. If something really went wrong, he wouldn't be able to escape this small room either.

But the moment the thought crossed his mind, the Silver Ring on his chest turned icy cold.

Madam Marie was warning him that she would handle it.

On the other side, the sliver of spirit within the Bone Bracelet awakened.

From within the Bone Bracelet, she extended a finger toward the blank card.

"Smack."

The card was pressed flat back onto the table by the finger.

Madam Marie closed the door that had been cracked open, acting on her student's behalf.

The eye was shut behind the door, and the temperature in the autopsy room slowly began to rise again.

Mrs. MacNeil stumbled backward, and Old Biggs caught her.

She gasped for air, panting heavily for a long time before she could speak.

"...The one behind him cannot be dug out with Tarot Cards."

A fine layer of sweat coated her forehead.

"I was almost..."

Old Biggs helped her over to a chair by the wall.

He let out a long breath himself and shot a glance toward the Bone Bracelet.

Mrs. MacNeil sat in the chair for a good while.

Old Biggs glanced at Richard and gestured for him to stay put.

The autopsy room remained dead silent for about five minutes.

When the medium finally stood back up, her complexion was still poor, but she had steadied herself.

She waved a hand at the deck of cards on the table.

The three face-down cards neatly gathered themselves back into the deck.

She placed the entire deck back into its box. The click of the lid shutting was exceptionally sharp.

After that, Mrs. MacNeil didn't try to touch that background layer again.

Changing directions, she chose only to read what the Chief Responder had done.

She walked back to the front of the table and took a palm-sized ebony box from the bottom of her suitcase.

A few tiny, polished copper nails were embedded in the lid.

"Bigelow, open the chest cavity a little wider."

Old Biggs grunted in acknowledgment, his scalpel making two more cuts on either side of the gaping chest cavity.

The piece of membrane-like "external interface" that had been pressing against the inner wall of the ribs had already been tossed into the refining furnace and incinerated.

The chest cavity was completely empty now, leaving only the ribs.

The medium opened the ebony box.

Inside lay a rolled-up net woven from dark silver threads.

Using Spirit Vision, Richard could faintly see ether flowing within the threads. The flow was entirely chaotic, bearing the marks of having been folded and stretched out over and over again.

"Rut Net," Mrs. MacNeil explained.

She shook it out, letting the mesh unfurl before draping it over the Chief Responder's chest cavity.

The net slowly sank down, adhering to the inner walls of his ribs.

Mrs. MacNeil hovered her right hand half an inch above the mesh.

She began to chant, that almost imperceptible whispering rumbling in the back of her throat again.

Old Biggs shot Richard a look, signaling him to step back.

Richard complied.

Standing two paces away, he could hear his own heartbeat amplified in the echoing autopsy room.

The medium's chanting lasted for about three minutes.

The dark silver threads of the Rut Net began to shift.

The first few threads floated up from the mesh and hung in midair, automatically coiling into a minimalist geometric shape.

Then came a second thread, and a third.

By the time the tenth or so thread rose, Richard realized what he was looking at.

They were the operational trajectories of Spell Formulas, "run" out of the Chief Responder's chest inch by inch by the threads.

Each trajectory corresponded to a Spell Formula the Chief Responder had executed while alive.

The traces intertwined in midair, forming an incredibly complex web within a web.

"...Found it," Mrs. MacNeil murmured softly.

Extending an index finger, she picked a thread from the inner web that was darker than all the rest.

Its shape was highly unusual—an inward-curling spiral.

"A Silence Spell," she confirmed.

Old Biggs leaned in.

"Is that the one the Lieutenant Colonel was hit by in the cave?"

"Yes." The medium nodded. "He cast it twice in the mine shaft. I've pulled out the traces for both."

She carefully plucked the thread from the inner web and laid it on a piece of parchment she had prepared beforehand.

The moment the thread touched the parchment, it fused to the surface, transforming into streaks of ink.

With the Spell Formula imprinted, she picked up a small bag of Runestones used for Stone Reading and poured them into a Copper Dish.

Mrs. MacNeil had learned her lesson when divining fortunes this time. She used Stone Reading—a method that yielded vaguer results, but made her much harder to track down.

The dish clinked as a few Runestones rolled into the center.

The medium gave them a glance, then grabbed another handful and tossed them in.

After three rounds of this, she looked up.

"The divination is done. The Spell Formula itself has no inherent good or evil."

"It is just a tool."

"How a tool is used depends on the person wielding it."

"Any entity that relies on the rhythm of Spell Formulas and breathing methods will miss half a beat if swept by this."

Richard leaned a little closer.

What had appeared on the parchment was a complete structural diagram of the Spell Formula.

In the center was a tiny mark shaped like the two steel pipes on the workbench.

Drawn around the pipes were two clusters of symbols corresponding to the herbs: Multi-Eyed Black Moss and Silent Fern.

The operation of the entire Spell Formula relied on the caster pushing ether out through the steel pipes, activating the two herbs inside.

Once stimulated, the herbs expelled a "vacuum" on the etheric plane.

When that vacuum blanketed the target, any Spell Formulas or breathing method rhythms the target was currently running would be completely disrupted.

Of course, just like with the Gargoyle, the steel pipes were merely a casting medium. Once proficient, they could be discarded.

"Got a good look?" Mrs. MacNeil asked.

"I did." Richard nodded.

She pushed the parchment toward him.

"If you're interested, you can learn it."

"As for the two herbs used as the casting medium, you'll have to figure that out yourself.

"Multi-Eyed Black Moss isn't too hard to find; you can pick it in the nearshore transition zone.

"Silent Fern grows much deeper, right on the edge of the deep frontier. It rarely circulates through proper channels."