“I think I’ve been drugged!” she shouted at the empty halls of the dungeon, halfway between a giggle and a sob.
Spores. Pollen. Bad air.
She could tell the thoughts were not her own, now that adrenaline had buffered her mind against the worst of the effects. She knew it wouldn’t last, and needed a better solution.
“It’s in the air?” she asked the voice.
Like dust, choking my children. We are trapped within the Eye.
With her mind temporarily cleared, Morgan could see. Just barely discernible in the air, only [Mana Sight] allowed her to pick them out at all; tiny motes like the glimmers of dust in a sunbeam. She had no spell to filter them out, and no time to craft a new one; even as she watched, she could feel the spores—whatever they were—lay on her mind again, a choking fog to snuff her out. But Morgan didn’t need a specific spell for her inner fire. She merely had to let it out.
So she did.
Lulu gave a trilling wurble of triumph as actinic purple light filled the green-sheathed hallway around Morgan, the little scrubby immune to the flames of its mistress. The Sorceress breathed the flames in and out, embers searing their way from under her skin to flare into a localized inferno. There was still pain, but it was distant and muted. The fire was her and she was the fire, hungry and indiscriminate. And the dusty pollen proved to be wonderful fuel.
Waves and trails of orange flames flashed out in short-lived clouds even further away from Morgan as the fire ran joyfully ahead of her. Tendrils of yellow light burned their way down the hallway ahead and sparked secondary flash-fires that raced in and around the leaves on the walls. Tiny buds hidden just under the leaves glowed like lantern-wicks for a brief moment, before crumbling away to ash.
As the fire cleansed her body, her mind began to clear as well. Anger replaced confusion, and she added its heat to the fire. Around her kneeling body, the leaves and sticks littering the dungeon floor turned to ash and crumbled to dust, and then the dirt itself began to bake, flowing like sand as the stone underneath softened. Her knees, feet, and hands sank into the floor of the dungeon, leaving imprints like a child playing in wet concrete.
PLEASE, STOP!
The words sliced into her mind, the mental plea gutting her rage with its primal fear and panic, and she banked the flames, keeping them just within a few feet of her body. The words came fainter, as if pushed across a vast distance, strain evident in the speaker’s voice.
You burn even the webs!
The sounds of laughter and the auditory hallucinations were gone, but to fill the void, an entirely new sound echoed through the halls: a distant screech, a furiously angry noise that told Morgan she was no longer alone here. Further up the passageway, where her fire hadn’t scorched the walls, dried but still green foliage rippled in time with the enraged outbursts.
You rebuked her! She traps us all!
Who? She couldn’t speak the reply out loud, her throat and mouth too dry for anything more than a faint croaking. She pulled a pouch of broiled shellipede from her storage, chewing on the grease-moistened flesh to wet her parched gullet and work up some saliva.
Solana of the Vines…her pollen brings the waking dreams, dragging us to sleep.
Morgan sat back on her haunches to think, the heat-softened stone soothing to her bare bottom and feet. Who is us?
The reply came not in words, but images and feelings. Like looking through a hundred eyes at once, she could see an oval-shaped clearing from many different angles. From each viewpoint, she saw many different creatures entangled in thorny vines. Deer. Wolves. Tyrannorabbits and Murdersquirrels, even a Shellipede, and what she thought was the emaciated form of a giant species of bear. A titanic creature that looked like nothing so much as an overgrown panther took up a space over six paces wide, stretching from the dungeon floor up to the branches that formed the canopied ceiling.
All of us. I send my children to make webs to find a way to escape, but all fall prey to her spores, until you! My children show me all the prey of Solana!
“Who are you?” asked Morgan, finally finished eating and having worked up enough saliva to actually speak.
A thousand images at once skittered across her mind. Webs spun in shadows and sunlight, between trees and along the banks of rivers, in damp tunnels and the open treetops. Eggs, silks, and fluttery prey, the bite of fangs, and sharp tang of venom. The satisfaction of the well-sprung trap, the hatching of offspring and their subsequent flooding out into the world, spinning more threads to connect to the web that spanned across worlds.
I have no name. I simply am, and I am trapped here like the others.
“Oh, you’re a spider.”
Morgan busied herself eating another parcel of cooked shellipede from her storage, stocking up on calories and getting ready for another fight. She would prefer to avoid it, but her preferences had had little to do with her circumstances of late. “I suppose you’re huge too, gigantic like all the animals in the wildlands…”
It was more of an observation than a question, but the voice still answered.
Not a spider, although that comparison is closer than any other. More images flashed into her mind with the words, feelings of insult mixed with amusement. I am as large as I need to be!
“Got it, don’t call the spider fat,” Morgan replied, a trace of amusement in her tone.
Exoskeletal chitin does not get fat. It simply grows to accommodate the tissues and ichors of the being wearing it.
Morgan chuckled grimly, finished with her meal and now letting Lulu tidy up the grease and crumbs coating her hands.
“So tell me then,” she said after the loofah finished it’s ministrations, “where is this Solana? And what is this place?”
Solana feeds us to the Eye of Madness, and the Eye, in turn, feeds her. More images followed, visions of herself stumbling through the maze and leaving her breadcrumb trail of stone runes and pieces. The visions followed all the way up to her bursting into flame, and then the pictures continued ahead without her. The path ahead doubled back on itself multiple times, distorting the actual separation between her and Solana. It finally ended in the huge cleared room with the trapped beasts, and a pool of water ringed by roots and ivy-like leaves. The water roiled angrily, and the outline of a woman shrouded in leaves and vines lay just below the surface.
Many have sought to claim the power of the Eye for themselves, and all have fallen to her spores. Free us, Burning Woman! A grim urgency flavored the last part of the message.
“So…she doesn’t like fire, huh?”
Morgan pushed herself to her feet and brushed the worst of the ashen dust from her body as Lulu purbled about to take care of the rest.
“Well, I have lots of fire. ”
And the [Skyclad Sorceress] strode further into the dungeon, girded with terrible purpose, her own laughter drowning out the frantic shrieks of the plant-woman in the center.
Chapter 21: Glimmers and Glimpses
Rella—former orphaned street rat, later temple girl, and currently the [Oracle]—huddled under the blankets in a farmer’s cart as it wound its way through the hills approaching the small town of Brackholt. She had carefully avoided any temples or larger settlements as she travelled. Some stops in small villages to send messages had been necessary, but for the most powerful precognitive on the continent, it was a trivial matter to avoid Deskren patrols and slip in and out of such places. She’d sent several parcels to various destinations, leaving instructions and personal foretelling advice for those willing to help the new [Oracle] as payment for sending her missives.
Her new Class—both a Mantle and Title in one, and singularly unique in all the world—had not been kind to her since the Purple Night. It was only under the aegis of her predecessors, souls contained within the Mantle of Prophecy, that she was still sane at all. Least of her concerns was that she could no longer sleep; the shared consciousness of the previous [Oracles] bore the burden for a few hours each night to allow her some sem
blance of rest, but their ability to do so was fading faster than Rella was learning to control the visions that constantly bombarded her mind.
We may have to attempt more dangerous methods of training, girl, said a familiar and comforting voice in her mind. The previous [Oracle] still retained the strongest personality of all the others. The further back in time a given [Oracle] had lived, the fainter their individual presence, and the more they faded into the gestalt. The more ancient ones were beyond the ability to speak, merely sending images or memories of emotions. They stayed in a dreamlike state, the worlds they’d lived and died in so lost to time that little could stir them to break their own slumber.
Images cascaded through her thoughts in a never-ending stream, and she still couldn’t manage to partition them away from her conscious mind. Glimpses of the Wildwall—the mountains that separated the Western Nations from the Wildlands—overlapped with scenes from the western shore of the continent. Situations occurring up in the frozen north vied with the growing number of disturbances in the Southern Elemental Desert—the sandy barrier separating the Kingdoms from the Deskren Empire. She was a prisoner of her own visions, seeing almost everything, and able to see nothing. With a bit of conscious effort, she could follow one chain of action and choice or another into the past. The future remained a blur, however.
The gestalt of the thousands of women held within the mantle was the only thing buffering her mind against the full impact of trying to funnel so much information through one person. I’m not learning fast enough, Rella told the others inside the mindscape.
The world can’t afford an insane [Oracle] right now, replied one of the women.
You must appoint a Champion, a protector, to stand guard over your body while we take you deeper into the mindscape, said another woman, her form seeming more childlike. That one must have acquired the mantle extremely young, and died young as well, Rella realized with a bit of sadness.
Don’t cry for me, kid, said the girl. It’s not like it’s lonely or boring here; if I’m not upset about it, you have no right to be, either.
An older woman stepped forward from the quiet crowd of souls. Once you have your protector, we can take you back to the Elders. Time flows differently for them that sleep so deep within the Mantle, and you must secure protection for your body while you are under.
And not for just a few hours or days, either, said the girl-child. You could be under for more than a week. Much longer than Class Selection.
The Mantle has passed between women without a Class, and women of so many different Classes over the ages, the older one told Rella. You must learn to hold back the sight to protect yourself before you can partake of our other gifts.
One of the older [Oracles] spoke up then: Eventually you’ll be able to use any Skill any of us ever learned, but only one at a time.
Well, that would have been handy to know a bit earlier, Rella thought at the other women.
The girl gave her the thought equivalent of a mocking snort. You can’t even control the Sight yet, don’t get ahead of yourself.
I should be arriving in Brackholt in —Rella withdrew from the mind-space and allowed her senses to be swamped with all the local possibilities and current circumstances happening for several miles around her; nauseating confusion nearly overwhelmed her for a moment before she regained her bearings and returned to the half-dream—about two hours.
You’ll have to endure the chaos until then, if you want us rested enough to act as a buffer while you are in the town, her predecessor explained.
I do, Rella replied. I could probably get my Champion to agree out of pity if I collapse in front of him, but everything I’ve seen says that’s a bad idea for the long run. I want his respect, not his sympathy.
Don’t be silly here, said the child-[Oracle]. We dream your dreams, too. You’re hoping he’ll be your lover one day, and if he pities you, that will never happen, and we all know it.
As Rella blushed and cringed inwardly, the previous [Oracle] scolded the younger girl with the mental image of twisting her ear. That was unkind. All of us suffer enough during our tenure. Leave her some chance at whimsy and romance without teasing!
It’s okay, the current [Oracle] sent back at the others. All of you, rest, please. I can deal with a headache for a couple of hours so you can help me again when I reach Brackholt.
The girl radiated feelings of chagrin and apology as Rella left the mindscape and brought herself back to the waking world. The wagon trundled along, pulled by the farmer’s mule, and her abilities gave her the distinct pleasure of experiencing every bump and jostling impact a few seconds early, before feeling them again in real-time.
Rella sat up, digging some jerky and a waterskin out of her pack. By the time she’d resettled herself in the back of the cart, the protective mental shield provided by the past [Oracles] had faded from her mind.
The farmer noticed her movements and called back to her, “Just a few more miles, Miss. You just rest up, and we be there by noon.”
“Thank you,” she replied around a mouthful of too-spicy jerky before washing it down with a few gulps of water.
“No thanks needed. The [Oracle]’s word on what to plant on what day for a bumper crop come harvest is worth more than a trip to Brackholt. You just sit comfy, an’ ol’ Hett’ll gitchee there.”
Grateful for the farmer’s help, Rella settled back into the wagon to make herself as comfortable as she could manage, with the impending headache already worming its way between her eyes. As she lay her head back on her pack and secured a strip of cloth over her eyes to block out the daylight, the [Oracle] began to See. Slowly at first, and then with increasing speed, her awareness spread. Starting within a few hundred yards around the wagon, her perception expanded as the power of the previous mantle-bearers faded away.
At first, things were bearable. What triggered the gifts of the Mantle were choices and actions, and the greater the effect of the choice, the more sharply her attention was pulled toward the possible outcomes. The region through which she traveled was, thankfully, less densely populated than most, which meant she had less information flooding into her mind at first. But even then, it wasn’t exactly pleasant. The primary function of an [Oracle] was to bear witness, and thus she witnessed.
She saw people going about their lives, making choices, both mundane and of great import. She saw good works, and evil ones. She saw a man shove a child out of the way of a startled horse, a bitter wife drop poison into her husband’s food, and a pair of builders decide to lay the foundation for a new mill on a different plot of land than they had originally planned. The new location was a mistake; within four months of the building’s completion, the nearby bank would erode into the river and topple the structure, as its foundation washed away.
Rella also wasn’t spared the sheer, disgusting obscenity of everything unmentionable. As the area she could See spread further, she witnessed murders, rapes, depravities, and deaths. To all the horrors people inflicted upon themselves and each other, the [Oracle] bore witness. Her heart broke with every anguished sob.
But it also soared, for not all was horrible and dark. A maiden wrapped her legs around her lover and gave in to passion’s first kiss. A man and wife held their newborn child and wept for joy. A woodcarver finished the last touches on a masterpiece and stood back to admire it. A group of adventurers defeated their first higher-leveled monster, wounded, but victorious and proud. Fortunes were made, fates were sealed; people tasted the sweetness of victories, both great and small, and the bitter flavors of defeat in all its forms.
Most things she saw, Rella knew she would never be able to allow the knowledge to pass her lips, or write it down, nor share it in any fashion. The [Oracle] stood as Witness to the world, not as its judge or jury. The Sight began to blur as her range surpassed a thousand leagues, every action and choice spiraling out, with possible futures and outcomes that shifted in time with the different choices people made.
Some places w
ere beyond even her ability to see; the Elemental Desert and the bulk of the Deskren Empire were shrouded in phantasmal, turbulent mists. Unfortunately she could clearly see their legions marching north, out of the sandy dunes, and had borne mute witness to the fall of South Hollows and the subjugation of hundreds of surrounding farms and smaller settlements.
The Deskren were still hundreds of miles south of Brackholt, although the northern cities were already arming themselves for full-scale war. Rella’s current destination sat halfway between Meadowspire and West Harbor, in the southern hills of the Golden Meadows. Thinking about the place shifted her Sight, revealing a busy little town with hastily erected palisades and rough stone fortifications, mortar not yet dry. To one side of the town, an older and more properly built stone structure with a watchtower and barracks sat bracketing a training yard. Rella could see the focus of her current plans training in heavy armor, with a large shield and a mace. His face was obscured, but she had observed him often during the weeks since she took up the Mantle of Prophecy. He faced off against four opponents and, despite being outnumbered, acquitted himself well. Two girls with identical faces and matching pale golden hair sat on the fence around the training yard, watching their brother, and tossing colored balls of light back and forth as if playing a game.
A breaking wave in the sea of probabilities pulled her vision far to the west, past the coastline, and to Stormbreak Isle. There she watched Constable Zizzy as she stalked between two villages, trying to catch her quarry before he claimed a new victim. Rella knew she would fail to catch him today, and that the experience would change the succubus forever. The [Oracle] hoped the succubus wouldn’t give up, however. She’d lent the demon constable all the help she could for now, though she desperately wished she could do more.
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