"There's something down there. In the lake." Saying that, Margot was already swimming to the shore of the lake, with a renewed body, but with disgust. "I felt something fleshy, like skin, at the bottom. Do you think it's a corpse?"
Professor Philius nodded, and Margot shivered, almost seeing stars. And not in a good way.
"Could that corpse be making the lake behave differently? Like the bacteria and spores the body releases causing it to function as a healing lake?" Margot, now on solid ground, turned around, trying to see the corpse from her spot, but couldn't.
It must be very deep, she thought.
"That would be a good theory, but corpses don't do that. They just rot, and rot everything around them." Removing his jacket, the professor handed it to Margot, who, in the excitement of the moment, hadn't noticed her body was trembling after a dip in the lake, simply thinking about how many bacteria and viruses she might have contracted by diving into the lake without doing research first.
When Margot reacted, she couldn't help but stare at the tattoos on the professor's wrinkled skin. They were more symbols than tattoos, actually. The professor had had them since she met him, and when Margot asked long ago what they were, the professor said they were tattoos that all the firstborns in the family had, with a dark aura around him.
Since then, Margot never spoke about those tattoos again and simply ignored them.
Bad memories, for sure.
"Maybe it's the body of someone who tried to search the prophecy, just like us." With a grateful smile for the jacket, Margot approached the doctor, crouching and trying to see something. Anything.
And in that position, they stayed for a few minutes, which felt like hours to them, waiting for the answer to their questions to come like a messenger.
"Well, it's decided." The professor stood up and gave Margot one of the brightest smiles he had ever given her, his eyes disappearing as he smiled.
"We're going to get the body out...?" Margot stared at him, feeling, deep down, that something was wrong.
"No, he will come out."
"He?" Margot thought it could be a girl, but apparently, the professor thought otherwise.
He knew otherwise.
Connecting the dots, Margot's eyes widened, "He, as in the one we've been looking for the last two years?"
"Yes, and here, in case you have any problems." From his pocket, Professor Philius handed Margot what looked like a letter, not old but freshly made. The woman stared at what would be her mentor, with obvious doubt in her eyes, but didn't rush to open it.
"What do I do with this? Is there a spell in it to wake the dead man?" Margot tried to joke, but with the strange bats and the magically healing water, spells and enchantments didn't seem too far-fetched.
Hell, there were literally moles the size of a person that talked and tried to dominate the globe.
"No, it's simply my will. I leave it to you." The professor said by way of explanation.
Opening the letter, Margot found what the professor had said. In it, he talked about leaving the money from his discoveries and houses to Miss Lia Margot Booker, and more information that Margot didn't pay attention to.
With a chuckle, Margot looked at him, as if he were telling her a joke, "I liked the idea of a spell better."
The professor said nothing and broke the silence by taking off his shirt and showing all the tattoos. The symbols.
Margot couldn't help but compare them to the symbols in the cave, and in everything that spoke of the prophecy. The statues with symbols on their skin, the drawings in the writings, and the cover of the books.
"You're going to commit suicide today, aren't you?" Margot asked, but she already knew the answer. And she didn't like it at all.
"It's not suicide, but a sacrifice for better times." The professor said, as if that made it better. "It's not the farewell I would have liked us to have, and there were many things of the globe I wanted to teach you, but it's today or never."
"Then don't do it!" Margot told him, approaching and trying to make him see reason. "You're only 70 years old! You still have a life ahead of you, and I don't think the prophecy speaks of sacrifices for sav—"
"That's where you're wrong, little Lia." Margot flinched at hearing her first name. "I'm already old, and the prophecy does speak of sacrifices."
Margot shook her head, but the professor continued, "Haven't you seen the writings? The legends they talk about? At first, I didn't want to accept it either, but these drawings on the cave walls and floors proved it even more. An honest sacrifice, and God will lend a helping hand."
Walking towards the lake, the professor threw the gun and his thing at her, and spoke again, "I couldn't bring the other documents with me, but in the house in the forest, there are papers with the other information we've collected. Read them, many of them are important. Extra information about the prophecy, other discoveries, and about those beings."
Margot said nothing, clutching the paper in her hand.
Was this a goodbye?
Was the professor giving up?
If anyone should sacrifice themselves between the two, it should be Margot, not the professor. People needed him, not like—
And as if reading her thoughts, the professor said, "And don't waste your mind thinking if there's another way. This was my destiny, my family was preparing for this. No one else could do it. This was the perfect decreed plan."
Margot found such words pretentious, but in a way, she understood when the professor's body touched the water, and like the drawings in the cave, his body lit up, with the dark tattoos glowing and shining. The more he walked, the more he shone, and Margot had to close her eyes for a moment when the water became one with his body, making the water crystal-clear and reflective too.
Margot had the urge to go and pull him out, tell him there was no need for more deaths if they sought salvation, but the doctor turned around, looking at her while the water covered him almost completely, and something in him made her stop.
His eyes.
In them, Margot saw the crazy look of someone with a curse since the moment he was born. Of proving himself.
Someone seeking to be relevant.
The hunger to be remembered.
And all thoughts of stopping him vanished.
"It pains me not to be able to continue travelling the globe with you, but I'm sure you will keep having adventures. Your own adventures, and that gratifies me."
Soon, the professor's body was lost in the water, and with trembling legs, Margot sat down, waiting to see something. Something besides the blood that began to flood the lake, evidence of the sacrifice made.
Honest sacrifice.
Sacrifice.
Honest.
Honest.
Honest.
Honest.
Hours passed, feeling like mere seconds, and Margot didn't move an inch, staring at the lake, drowning, without water, in her own anguish and despair as she held the professor´s gun.
Every breath in that room felt very loud, and Margot once again remembered that she was now completely alone in the caves in the middle of the mountains in Threta, with no one she knew, on a continent completely different from hers.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The small noise was almost lost and ignored by Margot, but when she looked up at the lake, she saw nothing strange.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Small waves of water arose, one stronger than the other.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Margot stood up in an instant, staring at the lake, deep down hoping the professor would emerge from it. Slowly, someone came out, and the more she looked, the more Margot's brow furrowed.
It was not the professor.
No.
It was a man, if he could be called that, with his cheeks full of baby fat and big eyes, full of life.
They looked at each other for a few seconds, and Margot couldn't help but feel on edge, taking a step back. The man broke eye contact, scratching his neck, and murmured loud enough for Margot to hear, with a pronounced accent, "Excuse me, but... do you have any spare clothes?"
Margot swallowed the bitter taste in her mouth, and the unhappy emotions that were beginning to arise within her, and dumbly nodded.
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I don't know where to put the information about the prophecy without it looking like an info dump, but I think I know how to, kind of.
I'll change the POV from now on, and probably won't change it again.
Something I probably should have said from the first chapter, but this is another world, with other places and countries.
P.S.: At the beginning, Philius was going to be called Philip, but I found the name very bland, so I decided to change a few letters. But looking at it now, I probably should have called him Phileas. An existing name, but oh well. What's done is done.