Chapter 481: What Was Left
Derek opted to stay at the entrance and to not say anything as Alanah took in the cave where she spent much of her childhood and early adult life. As far as he could tell, with the cave being only dimly lit by Alanah’s light orb, there certainly wasn’t very much scattered around the area. But Derek was able to make out a few shapes lying around—he was unsure what they were, but they were definitely different from the rocks and dust that occupied most of the cave.
The siren slowly moved around the cavern from one side to the other. Occasionally, she would crouch down and pick something up before tossing it toward the middle of the room. Eventually, the woman made her way all the way around the cave and came to be standing beside Derek. After a short moment to breathe deeply, she turned to Derek and smiled lightly—in the dim light, he saw a tear roll down the siren’s cheek.
“Come here,” Alanah said. She waited for Derek to nod, then led him to the back side of the room. Finally, she kneeled down, sat the light orb off to the side, and began rubbing dust off of a certain area. “Even after all these years, some of the stuff here is still intact. And if some of the things laying out in the open are still whole, then what about something I took great care with?” she asked rhetorically.
Again, Derek knew she wasn’t waiting for an actual answer from him, so he stood silently behind her and watched. Eventually, a great deal of dust and dirt was removed from the ground, and Derek saw that there were actually some breaks in the rock beneath them. As it turned out, the cracks weren’t natural at all—they made a rough rectangle in the ground and were obviously man made.
Once the entire area was revealed, Alanah took a deep breath and tried to fit her fingers in the small cracks, but could not. “My fingers aren’t as small as they were when I made it, and I never increased the size of the cracks to accommodate my adult hands. I used to use a rock to pry it up when I needed to get to it,” Alanah explained, after which she summoned a very normal-looking dagger from her storage ring. “Now… just have to be very, very careful,” she muttered to herself.
Very carefully, Alanah wedged her blade into the crack. With a slow and steady motion, she pushed down on the dagger and used it to slowly pry the stone up—being careful not to let her current strength damage anything in the process. Derek guessed that this was why she used such a weapon to do the job instead of her rapier or another, sharper weapon—most of the stuff that they would use at their levels would absolutely devastate any normal ground or stone they even lightly touched. This could be seen in the way Harbinger was able to slice through the walls of the abyss.
As soon as the dagger brought the side of the stone up, Alanah quickly grabbed the raised edge with her fingertips. Once she had a good hold on the stone, she took a deep breath and raised it up and out of the ground. It took a lot for Derek not to lean over the siren and get a peek at what was inside the storage hole that she’d made when she was younger, but he was able to control himself and wait.
Alanah sat the stone gently on the ground beside her, then she leaned forward on her knees and reached slowly into the hole. Being more careful and gentler than Derek had ever seen her be before, Alanah slowly raised something up out of the ground. Whatever it was, was wrapped up in an extremely tattered and dirty cloth.
With a flick of her wrist, a stunningly regal and clean white sheet appeared on the ground in front of her, just on the other side of the hole. For the first time, Derek saw that Alanah’s hands were slightly trembling while clutching the object. Lightly, the siren laid the object on the sheet—after which, she picked up and placed the stone back in the hole.