Cursed Blood | Chaelisa

Chapter 50.

Lisa and I exchanged a look and then we both jumped right back on the coffin again. Jisoo and Jennie followed suit. The coffin shook harder. Lisa and I were using all our body strength and weight to hold off, and I was sure Jennie was doing the same with her mental power. Jisoo didn't count much in this department, but she was also trying to help.

"Joy?!" I said when she didn't come along. She kneeled before the golden coffin and stared intensely at the inscription on the side.

"There's a Vedic mantra here," she said. "I'm trying to read it. It's all Sanskrit mixed with ancient Khmer, holy cow!"

I could hear the screaming rage of the immortal underneath us.

"Joy, stay calm and translate whatever the heck you can," Jennie said. "Does it say anything to hold this thing down permanently?"

"I am calm!... but... Oh my god, it says you have to have the ancestral key to close the coffin!" She said.

"WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO FIND A DAMN KEY!" Jennie yelled.

"Ancestral key?" Lisa said with a spark of realization in her eyes. Then she looked at me. "My mom had told me about the ancestral keys once. They were given to each royal family around the world to keep as their crests."

"Oh, so that means my father's necklace is a key?" I said and quickly pulled out the royal crest through my collar shirt.

"Looks like that to me," Jennie said, "I think the lock hole is right here."

She brushed her hand over a carved picture of the sun at the head of the coffin. And the round carving thing was made inward, about the size of my medallion necklace. Then a loud bang from the coffin almost tipped us all off, but we kept our weight balanced, trying to hold down the trembling sarcophagus.

Without further delay, I placed the crest into the hole and pushed it. The lock clicked and rotated. Then the golden coffin made cracking noises as if some inner mechanism started running. And then the heavy cover fastened itself securely to the coffin with a final clash.

"She's locked!" I said triumphantly. Then we all got off the sarcophagus and backed away from it. Even if the coffin was closed, the immortal was pretty much alive and literally kicking. I winced as we all could still hear the piercing cry and cursing from the inside. It must be torturing for Pisaca to be back to her old prison cell. That was like being buried alive.

"Joy, how do we put her back to sleep?" I said, feeling a little sentiment more than I should.

"Sing her a lullaby?" She shrugged.

"Joy please," Jisoo said, "I can't bear hearing her like this anymore."

"We can't leave the immortal like that," Lisa said, "As long as she's fully awake, she's still dangerous."

"Okay, I'll read the inscription again," Joy said and returned to the coffin. After a while, she turned back to us. "I found a Vedic poem."

"Translate it," I said to her.

"It says 'The body is an altar, the mind is the fire blazing, sacrificing the sparks of the tree of Karma," Joy finished and looked back at us.

"What does it mean?" Jisoo asked.

"It means the body is nothing but an empty shell if the mind has lost its karmic energy," Lisa explained to us. "Take away her karma or desire, she will lose her grip on the physical world."

"What? Like making her enlightened or something?" Jisoo asked, looking confused.

"No, not like that, we have to open the Chthonian element in her mind," Lisa said. "It's almost the same as when we're falling asleep."