Chapter 335: An impossible meeting
She stood there. She pressed her hand on the abdomen of her mother, whose breath continued to weaken. In just a few seconds after that, the mother’s breath disappeared. But Cyantha didn’t remove her hand. Just a second after that, the mother’s body jerked, jolting her whole body. With a loud, hollow gasp, the mother’s eyes opened wide. Then she fell back on the pillow, caught by Cyantha’s hand to prevent her head from bouncing off. Her eyes, perhaps due to weakness, slowly closed and she lay there...asleep. Yes, asleep, judging from the slow but steady heartbeat.
Hex watched everything occur without interrupting the girl despite the storm of questions brewing in his mind. The questions ranged from how he could see her yet not sense her to why the mother seemed to be dying after Jonathan’s visit. He didn’t doubt for a second that the Enlightened Knight’s visit worsened the state of Cyantha’s mother. But the biggest question he just wanted to shout at the girl was how she could use the nature element and that too at a level he had never seen before. And he had seen Dryads work their magic, people specially trained by Wrixia in the ways of healing. And yet none of those Dryads, wonderful as they were, could compare to this girl close to his age.
Cyantha seemed to finish up based on her action of tucking in her mother. Just as he thought she was done, she grasped the chin of her mother and pried her mouth open. Using one hand, she kept it open and stuck her finger inside.
Hex couldn’t see what she was doing but sensed the nature element stir and pour inside the mother in greater quantities. The mother squirmed a little and then relaxed. Cyantha pulled her finger out slowly. Following her finger, he saw a sticky, viscous thread of black liquid.
"Is that...?" Hex asked, realizing something.
"A Shadow Serpent?" Cyantha completed his question as she gathered the black thread in the palm of her hand. "It certainly looks like one but there are minute differences with the ones I remember. This is less natural. It had been tampered with."
The way she talked and her fascination with the creature seemed weird to Hex. Granted, he knew nothing about her but she left an impression on him. The girl’s soft heart, determination to do the right thing even at the cost of her life, and love for her close ones created an image in his mind that didn’t include the detachment and maturity she was revealing at the moment.
At the same time, the things she said caught his attention.
’She knows about Shadow Serpents, she knows how to deal with them, and she could tell with a glance that these differed from others. She seems less like a girl and more like a woman–’