Konehl-Ghervil discovered a disquieting truth: she had lost contact with Govet-Ghervil for over fifteen hours.
This spanned the entire afternoon after visiting Dr. Blumberg and the whole night that followed.
While Govet-Ghervil could initiate contact, Konehl-Ghervil possessed no means to reach back.
Plagued by profound unease, she voiced her concerns about her real body to Esli, though without much hope.
The unexpected answer she received, however, offered a fresh perspective.
If her dream self remained unharmed, her physical self in reality was equally safe.
Optimistically, she surmised that Govet-Ghervil’s safety was intrinsically linked to her own; as long as it stayed by her side, there was no need for excessive worry.
She reasoned it must simply be exhausted and resting.
Unable to sleep, they would still remain in their rooms at night, eyes closed in rest, maintaining the pretense of being ordinary inhabitants of this world.
For now, their task was to wait for Dr. Blumberg to recover all his memories of Alamany.
This, she estimated roughly, would take another two days.
As for Genipa-Berber, they decided against alarming him prematurely; they had sent signals, but he had not actively appeared or revealed his identity.
Three possibilities presented themselves: either Genipa-Berber was a ‘local,’ or he was Aylmer, unable to reveal himself due to special circumstances, or he was another outsider entirely.
The method to escape the dream remained unknown; surely, they couldn’t simply allow the mythical creature to awaken beyond the dream’s capacity, causing it to collapse.
That would be the riskiest approach imaginable.
If a curse could effortlessly obliterate a town, what might it do to a city?
It was impossible to say, and she dared not gamble, for no intelligence suggested this mythical creature was limited to a single form of cursed attack.
****
That night, the outside world buzzed with no less fervor than the previous evening.
The ‘Alamany’ once again engaged in their peculiar performance art, with cheers and curses rising and falling in a cacophony.
This continued until a violent gale swept through the town, thunder boomed, and a rare, brief deluge poured down.
In the crisp morning, breathing air cleansed by the rain, Konehl-Ghervil left the inn to bring Esli a hearty breakfast.
Upon returning to her room, just as she prepared to enjoy her own meal, several images flashed through her mind.
These amounted to two and a half pages of sketches.
Given the art style, which emphasized light and shadow, she immediately recognized them as the torn-out drawings from Mrs. Penelope’s notebook.
“How did you manage this? Where have you been these past dozen hours?” she asked, astonished by Govet-Ghervil’s display of power and relieved by its safe return.
“Read through the notebook’s contents,” Govet-Ghervil replied, its voice grave, “and then I will explain what happened yesterday.”
Sensing the gravity in Govet-Ghervil’s tone, Konehl-Ghervil assented.
As she sipped her warm goat’s milk, she closed her eyes, and the details of the images sharpened.
The first image continued the narrative from the previous notes: a portion of the town’s inhabitants had transformed into lizard-people, all marching in the same direction towards a colossal black sun in the distance.
The scene was utterly bizarre, imbued with a chilling sense of dread.
Those who did not walk towards the sun, however, exhibited varying degrees of bodily liquefaction and bleeding.
The second image instantly provoked a powerful sense of revulsion in her: a gigantic, scaly, grotesque heart hovered in the sky.
Much like the lizard-head skin they had pieced together in Alamany’s house, beneath the dense, uneven scales were not only tentacles but also the faces of the transformed lizard-people of the town, each bearing a numb, eerie smile.
They were crammed into the crevices where tentacles met scales, connected to the tendrils from various positions and angles.
A ceaseless stream of people was swept away and devoured by the heart’s tentacles, joining this ‘grand family.’
The warm milk in her mouth nearly sprayed out.
She couldn’t fathom how Mrs. Penelope had recalled such horrifying scenes.
“So, these two pages depict the details of the town’s destruction?”
Govet-Ghervil did not directly answer, instead showing Konehl-Ghervil more images.
These were the entire sequence of events, from entering Baron Cambaton’s residence to the fleshy orb bursting through the building.
It was as if a reel of film was rapidly playing within her mind.
She felt as though she were experiencing it all firsthand.
Father Asriel’s death, Dr. Callan’s struggle, Aylmer’s actions, his dying words, and the deaths of the Agent and the doctor.
From this objective, overarching perspective, she witnessed even more: during their escape, Govet-Ghervil had shown Dr. Schmidt Dr. Callan’s unconscious location, prompting her to turn back and save her, otherwise the consequences…
After viewing it all, Konehl-Ghervil remained silent for a long time.
“Do you still remember the rock cave from the notebook?” Govet-Ghervil asked, its voice deep, giving her a moment to silently mourn.
“I do,” Konehl-Ghervil replied, “but I never found an entrance to such a rock cave within the town.”
She had always assumed it was where the mythical creature hid, and she and Esli had searched the town more than once; while the town’s scenes matched the notebook, the cave and its interior were missing.
“It’s on the first page of the notebook.”
“Are you suggesting…”
Govet-Ghervil’s hint made her doubt her initial assumption: perhaps the notebook didn’t depict two separate scenes, nor was the order inverted; perhaps the entire notebook illustrated scenes within the cave.
“But how could there be a sun in a cave…?”
“The sun… that’s right…”
Her thoughts returned to the second page of the notebook she had found; the heart in the sky had not appeared inexplicably but had transformed from the sun.
“Thrale-Erg-Gunoorse—if you remove ‘Thrale’ from this name, the remainder corresponds to ‘cave’ in the Ancient God Tongue (TL Note: A fictional language within the story). It’s a reified concept, and this is my basis for identifying it as a mythical creature.” Seeing that Konehl-Ghervil accepted this deduction, Govet-Ghervil continued its explanation.
“But didn’t Father Asriel say it became a mythical creature by devouring all the plague in the town?”
“He was remarkable, devising such a method to trap a mythical creature, but ultimately, he was merely an ordinary man with some mastery over dream powers. His knowledge, and his perspective, were limited; it’s perfectly normal that he wouldn’t understand the Ancient God Tongue or ancient secrets.”
“‘Cave’ is a minor branch of the ‘space’ concept. It constructs a domain using itself as an anchor point; anything within this encompassed area will be devoured. It possessed the power of the ‘cave’ first, enabling it to consume the plague, which is why the town vanished into thin air.”
Half a page of the notebook materialized in her mind, completing the missing first page.
For easier viewing, Govet-Ghervil had pieced the notebook back together.
The cave structure was now much clearer, and within the three-quarters of the entrance that had been completed, there was astonishingly an aerial thumbnail view of the town.
Seen this way, the first page represented both the cave entrance and implied that the town existed within the ‘cave.’
“Did you only find two and a half pages?”
Excluding the half-page, three pages had been completely torn from the notebook, leaving one still missing.
“You need to prepare yourself,” Govet-Ghervil stated, its tone heavy, as it presented the final image.
It was the last page.
Inside the rock cave, nothing remained—the houses, the townspeople, the foreign merchants had all vanished, leaving only the heart floating in the air.
It grew blood vessels, formed bones and organs, its scales enlarged, and its shape began to shift.
Finally, it transformed into the crumpled paper drawing they had pieced together: a terrifying lizard face covered in twisted tentacles.
This connected to the fleshy orb that had appeared at Baron Cambaton’s residence.
Thus, the black sun was, in fact, a fleshy orb encasing a heart; if that heart broke free from its cocoon, Florence City would suffer the same fate as the town, becoming nourishment for the mythical creature’s growth!
“Now, the master of this dream is, without a doubt, the mythical creature named Thrale-Erg-Gunoorse. It wasn’t a true dream from the start but was corrupted from an ordinary one.”
“The way to end this true dream and awaken the mythical creature is for everyone in the town to die once more, becoming its food.”
“Including all outsiders.”