Carpathian 20 - Dark Slayer

only one who can at this point.―
    â€œYou are thinking that you can find a way to aid your daughter.―

    He nodded. “ We can find a way,― he emphasized. “I cannot do it without your help. She cannot be converted and lives a half-life in order to keep the unborn children alive. If we can find a way to rid the soil of the mutated microbes, she can be converted.―
    â€œRazvan . . .― Her voice was gentle. “It is most likely the microbes have not found their way in yet. It is probably only a matter of time. As I understand it, extremophiles can live under pretty much any condition, no matter how harsh. If there was a way to destroy them . . .―
    â€œYou said yourself, you can reverse what he did.―
    â€œYes, but not destroy the ones already in the ground. I can stop them, but it will take time. Years even.―
    Ivory hated to disappoint him. He was looking at her as if the moon waxed and waned with her. She laid a hand on top of his head. “We will find a way to help her.―
    â€œIt is here, Ivory. The answer is here,― Razvan insisted.
    â€œIn this cave. Life began in microbe form. There is something in this soil that protects against the invasion of the mutated microbes, I am certain of it.―
    She sank down beside him, feeling the healing earth move around her as if to cushion and blanket her with its warmth.
    Whenever she came to the cave she felt as if she’d come home. She’d spent a lot of time beneath the ground here, covered in the rich soil, absorbing the healing properties through her skin.
    She scooped up a fistful of dirt and allowed it to run through her fingers like water, feeling the individual properties as the substance moved over her skin. Was it only her imagination because she wanted to do this for him so much, or did she really feel as if there was something different, an element in the soil she was missing?
    â€œYou said there is always a balance of good and evil, Ivory,― Razvan reminded.
    â€œYes, but I deal with what is natural. Xavier twists what is natural into something evil. The microbes started out good, not evil, or at least neutral. They were not put on this earth to harm Carpathians. Xavier changed them for his own evil purposes.
    Had they been naturally poisonous, I would have no doubt that the cure would be close to them, as is always the case with nature. I can reverse his spell. I am certain I can, given the time to study it. But to find something to destroy what he has wrought . . .―
    â€œIt is here,― Razvan insisted stubbornly. “I feel it.―
    She looked around her. She had utilized the precious metals and called the gems to her for her weapons and her warning system. She had used the soil for her bedchamber, painstakingly transporting it until she had a full basin.

    Occasionally she replenished the soil with new, fresh earth, although the healing properties had always remained as powerful as within the cave itself.
    She believed in feelings. Ivory was very tuned to the earth after spending so many centuries deep within its rich beds of healing soil. If the metals and gems were the very veins and blood and bones of the earth, perhaps the organisms were her heart and soul.
    Razvan had experienced the same connection to the earth.
    Mother Earth had accepted him, attached her veins to his and encased him in her gems and minerals to save his life. She flowed in his veins in the way she did Ivory’s. Perhaps, with his newfound life, he was closer to the soil and could feel the minute differences in ways Ivory hadn’t explored yet, but that still didn’t make sense. She’d spent centuries in the earth, hooked to the ebb and flow of the earth’s lifeblood and she couldn’t detect what he thought he felt.
    â€œClear your mind of everything,― Razvan suggested.
    â€œSit like this.― He lifted his left foot and placed it on his right thigh and tucked his right foot onto his left thigh.
    Ivory sat facing him, assuming the position without question.
    â€œSpine straight, relax your shoulders. That is right.― He nodded his approval. “You want to make an oval with your hands, left hand on top of right, with your thumbs together and your middle joints of your middle fingers together. Let go of yourself. Similar to what you do in healing, but mind and body as one, and just