Elmer stood beside Eddie where he was leaning on the white-colored wooden railings of the porch, a spark of anxiety soiling the earthy scent of the windy air around them.
Eddie's demeanor had turned serious just like when he had been warning Elmer about finding out more on how to ascend the Echelon ranks, and Elmer was not sure why. He could not even fathom any reasons as to why he was deserving of such tension. And he was tired of waiting for Eddie to speak up first.
"Do you mind telling me what the problem is?" Elmer let loose his voice which caused Eddie to finally sigh, an action that did well to push away the silence he had veiled them with.
"I'd like you to tell me what this job you've taken on is about." Eddie kept his gaze forward, staring straight at the pulling horses—which were being beaten by the heavy rain—of the carriage parked before the house.
Elmer turned his eyes away from Eddie's side features and rested his weight on the porch's railing as well, his posture still well upright despite being a little bit forward tilted.
He doubted Eddie would have been here without already knowing exactly what job he was going to be of assistance with, so his question was obviously not out of curiosity. And since it was not that, then what else could it be? No matter what sort of thinking Elmer did, he knew he would never be able to figure it out. There was no point.
"Ms. Edna must have mentioned it through her emissary, no?" Elmer asked, deciding to find out Eddie's reason in a roundabout way rather than a straightforward one.
"That she did." Elmer had only met Eddie once until now, but the man discarding his witty nature somehow made his mouth bitter. "Still…" Eddie turned his head to look up slightly at Elmer. "I want to hear it from your lips."
Elmer peeked from the corner of his eyes at the leaned-forward man who was gazing at him unrelentingly. Then with a whisper of an exhale, he decided to let go of the words he had restrained.
"It's a job to search for a mystic artifact," said Elmer, hiding nothing. "And the one who stole it is apparently a high level corrupted one, which I didn't know at the time until Ms. Edna explained it to me."
"How did you convince her to accompany you on the job?" Eddie asked immediately that it was almost as though he had cut Elmer off.
"I only went to her requesting for any sort of information that could help me divine the location of the corrupted one," Elmer answered. "I never asked her to come with me."
Elmer had long since removed his gaze from Eddie, but he was now somewhat of the mind to return them back to the man to confirm if he was actually being pierced by narrow almond blue eyes.
"I see," Eddie said. And Elmer gave in.
He turned to his side to take a look at Eddie. Though, to his surprise and downed brows, the man seemingly in his late twenties had discarded his stern expression and had taken on his usual witty smile.
One of the eyebrows Elmer had turned down went up in an instant.
He had been hoping to get an understanding of Eddie's reasons for asking him that question during their conversation, but since not a single thing had come from it, he knew it was time to just go ahead and inquire. Except, before he could do that, Eddie spoke first.
"Allow me a moment to guess. If I recall perfectly the way the divination to find a person worked, you'd need an item which that person came in contact with to perform the divination." Elmer's gaze narrowed. He knew where Eddie was headed. "I am ninety percent sure that you were unable to obtain anything that was previously in possession of this corrupted one." Eddie turned to look at Elmer, and Elmer reciprocated, noticing that the man's smile had vanished once again. "Did Edna use it on your behalf?" Eddie's tone plummeted into deepness.
It…? Is he talking about her ability, 'Whispers of Time'…?
Elmer had confusion stain his face for a moment, but as he instantly understood what Eddie was asking about, he nodded and said, "I gave her a sketch I drew from what I remembered of the corrupted one when we came in contact, and she used her unique ability to divine his location with it."
Eddie turned away and lowered his head weakly, forcing Elmer's countenance to squeeze in a slight befuddlement.
He's not asking how I survived coming in contact with a corrupted one, or is it that he just doesn't care…?
"Reckless, that woman is. Too reckless for absolutely no reason," Eddie complained.
Elmer was finding Eddie's reactions toward Ms. Edna's decisions somewhat too weird since she was obviously a person who could take care of herself. She was an Ascender after all, it did not matter if she was just a clerk. And she had successfully completed a deed to put her in the Echelon 10, so it was not like she was a stranger to the field, she just seemed to prefer to stay away from it.
"I'm sure she knows what she's doing. It's her ability, isn't it?" Elmer spoke softly, trying to put Eddie's absurd reactions to a halt.
Eddie turned sharply to Elmer, raising his brows while he blinked as though the boy from the countryside had said something foolish.
Elmer jerked his head backward indiscernibly in return.
"Hmph… She did not tell you what that ability does to her, did she?" Eddie figured.
But he was wrong.
"She did," Elmer said without hesitation. "Her body is too weak to handle the effects of the ability, and if she uses it for a prolonged period of time than she can handle she would either become insane or die," he explained. "But it's her ability. From what I experienced, she was able to pull herself quickly from it before it escalated, which shows her control over it."
Eddie scoffed. "Control? Over the supernatural?" Elmer instantly felt stupid. "Edna's powers are different. The effects don't vanish just because she put a stop to the usage of the ability. She's directly courting time after all."
Elmer narrowed his eyes. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that at this moment Edna is still feeling the effects of using her ability. And I'm not just talking about tiredness or whatever puny weakness humans are bound to experience all the time, I'm saying exhaustion that may cause her death if she as much as recites another prayer relating to the supernatural."
Elmer gasped and the heavy patters of the ongoing rainfall suddenly grew deafening.
"You can't be serious," Elmer muttered. If that was true he could not understand why Ms. Edna would go so far to do something of such for him. She was basically putting her life in jeopardy. There had to be an explanation somewhere.
"Oh, but I am." Eddie rubbed his hair.
"But it makes no sense." Elmer turned to his side, pulling his left hand free from the railings in order to face Eddie completely. "Why in the world would she put herself at risk for me?"
"I can guess," Eddie said, causing Elmer to blink himself owlishly into silence. "She must be blaming herself for having registering the job wrong, which in return caused you to now be in danger." Elmer instantly recalled Ms. Edna's words which bore similarity to Eddie's. "Edna is a woman who already bears too much burden as is, if you die, it would only worsen the weight on her shoulders."
Elmer's chin lowered to his chest, then he turned back to gaze at the falling rain. "What are these burdens?"
He had asked that question not out of curiosity, but due to a sense of obligation which had suddenly come to be upon him. Ms. Edna was going to be risking her life for him, and he had an inkling that both he and Eddie would be unable to talk her out of it, so the least he could do was think of a way to help her with her burdens when their job for the night was done.
Eddie remained silent for a moment, seemingly out of reluctance, before finally saying, "I honestly do not think it would look good on me to speak about someone else's past, but…" He turned to Elmer. "Since I plan on requesting something from you, then I should probably do that."
Elmer tilted his head to the side as Eddie proceeded to turn away from him.
"Edna blames herself for her fiancé's death." There was a sharp inhale from Elmer. He had not been expecting it to be such a big burden. "They both took on the deed—Wait," Eddie cut himself off. "Do you know about the deeds?" Elmer replied with a nod and Eddie pursed his lips. "Well, Edna and her fiancé had taken on the same deed for ascending to the Echelon 10 open slot at that time. Only one of them could ascend, they knew, so they'd thought of it as some sort of competition then. They would both fight the evil spirit, and whoever got to kill it first was the better Ascender… But of course the supernatural was not something to joke about, and in that regard she was the only one who returned alive, her fiancé in her arms."
So it was not only your wits that led you to the evil spirit, Ms. Edna… Is that also why you remained unmarried…? And Kate, was it…
Elmer stared down at the floor as his stomach hardened.
He sort of understood what she was going through, as he had felt that way on that night five years ago, blaming himself for what had happened to Mabel. But now that he had already channeled all that toward those who had been truly at fault, he could not fathom how exactly Ms. Edna was feeling.
"In truth, no one was to blame, competition or not. They had both fought according to what they had learnt, her fiancé had just been unlucky. But Edna, till today, has been beating herself for it. That is the burden she carries. That is why she chose never to go into the field again. But your current situation, which shares some similarities with what happened to her fiancé, has brought her to the point where she's decided to take a step she hasn't taken in years."
Elmer took in a deep breath and exhaled.
"What is your request?" he asked soon after a couple seconds of silence.
"That we keep Edna safe," Eddie instantly replied. "Once she's made up her mind, there's no way to talk her out of it, so we can only do our best to protect her."
Elmer's brows narrowed at Eddie's burning passion for Ms. Edna, and Elmer could only think of three reasons why the young man was in such a way.
It was either he and Ms. Edna's fiancé had been best of friends, and he was feeling quite the obligation to keep her safe, or he was simply that strong willed to help his Ms. Edna, and lastly…
Do you have some sort of feelings for Ms. Edna, Eddie…?
Well, it didn't matter what the man's reason was, Elmer shared his feeling to keep Ms. Edna safe. And now that Eddie was asking for his help with that, he finally saw a way to create a perfect plan that would give him time alone with the corrupted one.
"Sure," Elmer told Eddie. "I want to keep her safe as well, so I'll help." Eddie's smile returned as he nodded, but Elmer was not done. "On the condition that you are in full support of the plan I have come up with to do that."
Eddie's gaze squinted into slits. "What do you mean?"
"I have a plan," Elmer said. "One I am confident about. I'll bring it up in the carriage, and you have to be in full support of it no matter what Ms. Edna says. You must not object to it in any way, only then will we be able to keep her safe."
Eddie turned his head sideways as if to ponder, then he asked, "What's this plan?"
But before he could manage to get a reply from Elmer, the front door pulled open and out came the young woman they had been waiting for.
Eddie quickly switched his countenance then, instantly donning his witty smile.
"Edna!" he hooted. "Why, you look splendid. A rainy night and a private carriage, what's the occasion?"
Ms. Edna gave off a weak smile which came about due to the right corner of her mouth curling up. "Don't start tonight, Dick. I already told you it's a serious matter."
Eddie gasped playfully as he dropped his brows. "Dick? Who goes by that name?"
Ms. Edna shook her head. "Forget it."
She turned to Elmer who was leaning backward on the railing and silently watching her demeanor, now noticing points that confirmed what Eddie had told him.
She really was exhausted—far too much.
"The time is past eight. I'd prefer if we could accomplish our mission before the curfew. We have our licenses so it wouldn't matter if we end up going over, but I'd like to be home with my daughter by that time. Are you ready?" Ms. Edna asked, and Elmer nodded. "Good. Let's leave then."
"Want my umbrella?" Eddie bent over and picked up his umbrella which he had left lying on the porch's floor as he directed his question at Ms. Edna. But she turned him down by showing him the two she held.
She then went ahead to hand Elmer one of them, inciting all three to head to the carriage while being shielded from the downpour of the rain.