I could feel my temper rise to dangerous levels, my anger increasing until Joclyn’s magic swelled again. The warmth of it wrapped around me so tightly it was all I could focus on, and the weight of my anger seeped away with it, the sound of the laugh fading to shadows until it was just me and the heavy familiarity of Joclyn’s magic pulling at my mind and soul.
The weight of her pressed against my chest, lying over my arms. Just as she was in the world I had come from, before I had been pulled into this place.
I stopped. The knot in my stomach spun abruptly at the revelation that was whipping me around. I had dismissed it so easily before, but there was nothing else …
“You are thinking about it again,” the child chastised. My mind focused back on that room, on the girl I held. “About where you are, about what this is. Have you figured it out yet?”
“This is a sight.”
She laughed at my revelation, the joyful sound making it clear I was right.
“Yes.” The laugh dripped off her voice. “This is where sights live, where they are created. This is a sight before it is seen, when it is full of possibilities and futures. This is the very base of Drak magic. This is where everything begins and ends.”
“But there is nothing here,” I gasped, knowing how ridiculous it sounded. I knew magic better than any. But this … This did not feel like magic. I felt no power. I felt no strength. It was only the empty space of my mind.
“Yes. Would you like to see your beginning or ending?”
I didn’t even have a chance to respond before her laugh rebounded, the sound loud and haunting. The white void I was trapped in shifted and spun as I watched, my mind aching with the change, with the force and power of the magic I was being subjected to.
With wide eyes, I watched the white meld into vibrant colors and shapes. My heart tensed at what I was about to see before the image landed on a room I knew all too well.
My parents’ bedroom.
“Your beginning first, I think,” the child’s voice whispered, her voice mellow as the mysterious magic within me spread. The light, joyful nature of it seeped away my fear as I looked in on a room I had been in thousands of times before.
It was my own space within Imdalind now, but it hadn’t looked like this for centuries. The wide bed took up much of the massive room, ancient furnishings cluttering the space. It was in this room that I had held Ovailia for the first time—her, a tiny infant; me, an adult.
Shocked, I looked as my mother lay in that same bed. Her blonde hair was wound in a long braid, the golden ribbon woven through the intricate weave. The length flowed over the bed, wrapped with my father’s, the délka vedení královsk intertwined. Just as they did with Joclyn and me, I realized with a start.
My father sat nestled against my mother, his dark hair longer, his face softer, his eyes smiling. I didn’t think I had ever seen so much joy in his eyes. I didn’t think I had ever seen my mother so happy as I did right then, as they sat in that bed, holding an infant in their arms.
I watched the scene before me, watched the father of my childhood memories. I had almost forgotten that smile, forgotten the way his eyes lit up when he smiled. I had forgotten how he used to love, that he used to know how.
“Give him the stone, darling,” my mother whispered.
Father smiled at her before he kissed her, the longing apparent as she laughed, before pulling away with the same joy in his eyes.
Smiling, he placed a small, white stone against the hand of the child. The tiny, white bead turned a violent shade of blue the second it made contact with my skin.
My parents looked at the transition in awe. Mother gasped before she laughed while Father’s smile expanded in awe.
The tiny birthstones usually took time to change, took time to connect with the infantile magic, time to pull it to that one spot. This time, it was instantaneous.
“You began there,” the voice came again as the image of my parents faded back to the void.
My head spun with the strength of Joclyn’s magic, the force of it like a confirmation.
“So this is what she is? It’s amazing. She’s amazing.” Awe dripped from me at the remarkable reality I was facing, the void seeming to be more than the empty nothing I had taken it to be. “How am I seeing this?”
“You hold the water in your body, more than any other who does not bear my blood. You have been burned for the one who speaks to your soul, for the one who came to change it all. You have survived its pain and bonded yourself to the one the mud has chosen to guide my kind. You are powerful, Ilyan Krul. I will allow you to see.” The childlike quality of the voice had deepened. The laugh that lived behind the words shifted to a darkness that wound through me, becoming an aged wisdom it hadn’t portrayed before.
I spun on the spot, searching again for the owner. Still, there was nothing.
“So I am Drak now?” I questioned, the words feeling heavy and impossible. My mind still moved over what I was surrounded by in a wave, a desperation to understand gripping me.
“I have shown you your beginning, but it is no more than part of the story, you know. So much of what you have seen has been broken by one who should not be among us. You wish to see sight? You wish to know? I will show you what is true. I will show you what you should have seen. It all ends before it begins.”
The deep rumble of her voice intensified as the magic did, melding with Joclyn’s so perfectly they seemed to be one. My magic pulled at me as if they were.
“Joclyn?” I asked the space, my voice hollow as her magic responded, as the voice continued to meld into one I knew all too well. One I loved.
“This is sight.”
I turned at Joclyn’s voice, expecting to see her behind me, panicked of what I would face and unprepared for what came, instead.
For what I was plunged into.
Without the slightest warning, I was plunged back into the maelstrom of light and sound. My head spun violently as my magic swelled, Joclyn’s right alongside it. With a twist of my stomach, the flashing prison filled with images that moved so fast I could barely focus on them. I knew that, with each image, with each flash of past and future, what I saw would be permanently imbedded into me, stored within my memory.
With a jolt of fear, Sain screamed in my mind, a young Dramin cowering below him, as the man held the boy against the wall of an alley.
A flash filtered the image to that of Edmund standing over Ovailia as he cut down her back, the flesh ripping open as she screamed and begged for mercy.
Wyn disrupted the scene, the girl barely a child as she sat, playing a game of marbles, simply to erupt in anger, her rage engulfing her in flames. Massive balls of fire soared around her before submerging her body, her skin burning away from the bone and creating something darker than I had ever assumed her to hide within her.
Her screams lingered in my ears as the image shifted to the French countryside where Joclyn walked by the house I had built for her so long ago. Her hair blew in the wind as she looked out at the waves, tears streaming down her cheeks.
My heart rate intensified at the image of my beautiful mate, alone, before it faded to me as an adult, teaching my brother Markus the traditional marriage braid. His smile was wide at his fortune, at being safe from our father, at what the following night would hold for him. That precious image shifted to his murder days later, that heartbreaking moment a flash of color in my mind. The haunting echo of Edmund’s laugh rippled through me before I was plunged into the belly of Imdalind, into the tunnels I had blocked many years before, right to the deep wells of the earth.
Sain, my grandmother, the first of the Trpaslíks, and the first of the Vilỳ gasped for air at the side of the wide well of Imdalind. The Vilỳ wriggled as it coughed and sputtered for air, its bright blue wings unfurling from the sticky muck like a hatchling. With a scream, its sphinx-like face twisted as it awakened from whatever life it knew before.
One after another, they came, images of past, present
, and future wound together so tightly my head swelled with the information, with the emotion carried on the back of them. I could barely process, could barely think. The throbbing ache amplified before the calm voice of the child came again, the voice high and haunting as it cut into the images bombarding me.
“This is sight as Joclyn knows it.”
Joclyn’s magic wound around my soul as the visions continued to slow. Like slides in a movie, they came and left, slowing until I was staring at myself from a time long before.
“This is sight,” Joclyn’s voice filled me, her magic pressing against me as I searched for her, unable to see anything except what the vision was showing me. “This is true.”
Everything moved in overdrive, my soul frozen in fear as I watched myself walk down the main hall in the middle of Imdalind, right to the first pool of sight that the Draks had used for centuries.
It was the exact scene from hundreds of years before: Sain surrounded by Draks, their bodies still as they stood, enveloped in capes. He walked around the pool to greet me, everything silent as he spoke at a speed I could not comprehend, leaving the ‘me’ of the past alone by the pool’s edge as I stripped off my shirt. Water rose up before me like a pillar, eating away my flesh as it connected with my magic.
“This is the end,” the child whispered as the sight I had seen a hundred times before swelled within me, my heart ready to see Joclyn, to see what I had committed to memory so long before. To see that moment when I knew she would be mine.
But it wasn’t.
It wasn’t anything like I had been shown before. The words were the same, but the images, the meaning…
Everything was different.
In one moment, everything I had been working toward, everything I had expected, was shattered.
“There is one among us…” The familiar words were spoken in the unified voice of the Drak, the sound hollow and familiar.
The sight pulled me away from the massive cave, away from the water, and into a different sight, into the black and fire, into a world that was full of terrifying screams.
“… who seeks to change the magic, someone who seeks to kill the magic.”
Screams filled me as I watched a destruction I had seen before. Instead of the dangers, instead of my father’s laugh, I saw him. I saw him stand as he ordered the deaths of hundreds, Sain cowering by his side, his hands and feet in shackles.
My heart ached as the blood flowed, my father’s laugh matching the voice of the Drak in perfect harmony.
“He seeks to kill the magic for his own personal gain. We see him as he fights, as he sheds the blood of us, as he sheds the blood of others. We see him as he stops the reign of magic, as he stops the time of ours.”
The voices of the Drak faded away as the sight shifted. My father walked into the same hall of sight I had seen moments before, his face sallow and grey as his hands writhed, eyes wide with fear.
I watched him kneel before Sain, the old Drak grinning as he placed his hand on my father’s head, the depth of his voice shocking.
“You must kill them all, Edmund. All of the Chosen. The sight is clear.”
“There must be another way!” my father sobbed, his whole body convulsing as he fell to the ground, the sight shifting as he fell.
Timothy ran across my sight, his squat frame tearing into a large forest clearing that was filled with an army. Thousands stood at the ready, bathed in ribbons of sun. It would have been beautiful if not for the reason they were there.
Edmund smiled as Timothy approached him, his face strained as he ordered the army out, as the sight shifted to the screams of hundreds of children, hundreds of Chosen massacred before my eyes. Vilỳs were captured, their wings ripped from their bodies before they were thrown into nothing more than a burlap sack.
I tried to scream, tried to run from the changes in the sight, but I couldn’t move. I was forced to watch as the scene kept me trapped in a reality I wasn’t ready to face.
“You, I’ll save for last,” Timothy hissed as he grabbed the blue Vilỳ I had seen born from the mud, his face defiant as he threw him into an oversized birdcage, locking the door with one flick of his magic.
“Is this now?” The echo of my own voice rippled throughout the sight, the sound distorted as it traveled from the past, reverberating throughout the sight as it shifted again.
“The time is now, My Lord,” the Drak responded, their voice hollow as it shifted violently across the painful image I was faced with. “You alone will be brave enough to fight him. Where others will lose their lives, you will prevail.”
Everything in me twisted uncomfortably as the sight faded to black, the dim light of a dungeon I had seen many times before coming into focus. Crude shapes of what I could assume were people drifted in and out of focus, and over it all, the deep, heavy words of a Drak flowed freely, the voice dead and monotone.
“The child is the key. If she lives, then the first of the Chosen is defeated. If she dies, then he prevails. Through her line comes the Silnỳ as seen before. Take her to the tallest spire and take flight. The time is now.”
If I could focus beyond the sight, focus beyond what was before me, I was in no doubt I would be crying. I could feel the heavy emotion wrack me, but I could not escape it.
One after another, the sights came, images flashing from the beginning to the end of time as everything sped up.
Edmund, ordering the death of thousands. Edmund, wooing woman after woman as he took their magic, leaving orphans behind. Myself as I fought him, trying desperately to defeat him, to stop the rein of death he had unfurled on our kind.
The mumbling voice of the Drak echoed during the sights, the tempo of the sound increasing as it mutated into the distorted words I had heard before.
“In a time far ahead, near the end of the world, in a time when everything is changing and everything is new…”
The images I saw shifted to things that were now so commonplace the wonderment I had felt the first time flittered away, leaving me confused as I watched cars, airplanes, and toasters.
“There will come a child.”
In an instant, the image shifted. This time, I recognized it as what I had seen before, the image of the same woman being handed an infant, a beautiful baby girl who, even in sight, pulled at my heart.
“A child, an infant, a child whom we see. We see her when she’s born. We see her when she’s grown. We see her now, and we see her then.”
The sight intersected with what I had seen before, the images the same as I watched Joclyn’s childhood, as I watched her grow. I watched her find joy. I watched her find her smile. I smiled, too. The heartache I had always felt before was now a distant memory, because even though I knew what I was about to see, I also knew what came after. I knew what she was to me now.
I knew that my wait was over.
“She is of the Chosen. Marked by the sign of the creature of fire, she has smoke in her eyes. A Chosen Child just for you.”
These images were all familiar to me now: this love, this connection, this powerful magic we shared. I could feel it wrap itself around me. It all enveloped me as I saw our first kiss, saw the flashes of magic I now understood and had already experienced.
“For in this child is power, power beyond belief. She is the most powerful. She will be the Silnỳ, the one who protects us all.”
Images twisted as I watched, subtle changes infecting the sights. I had noticed them, but none so apparent as when I saw Joclyn and I leaning up against a wall in the ruins of Rioseco, a battle unfolding around us. Flames surrounded us as we stood in each other’s arms, blood seeping from a wound in her stomach and the long, golden ribbon trailing from the braids in our hair.
The délka vedení královsk.
“This is truth,” the child’s voice came right on cue, the tone deep and terrifying as the reality of what I was watching hit me hard in the gut.
I had lived this. But what was more, when I had seen this the first time, it
had been different. It had been a different wall, a different battle. There had been no golden ribbons, no seeping wound.
Sain had chastised us, ripped his daughter apart, because she had broken the sight. However, what I was looking at now was exactly what had happened.
“This is truth,” the child said again, her voice boring into me as I stared, my mind numb as the truth was made clear to me.
My heart beat in a painful heaviness as the sight continued to unfold, the images broken as the prophecy cut through my focus. The words that had been Sain’s now blended with that of the child who had haunted the white space, the chimes of her voice a haunting melody.
“You will love her,” they said together, “but you cannot have her. You will protect her, but you will fail.”
I cringed as the voice of Sain and the woman blended in and out with those of the Drak, rising and falling as the anxiety built. My muscles uncoiled in fear of what I was about to see: the image of Joclyn’s death, the heartbreak that had haunted me for hundreds of years.
“This is truth,” the child spoke over the prophecy of the Drak, her voice loud in my ears. “This is the end.”
I thought I had been scared before, thought I had been ready for what was coming, but not anymore.
With those few words, a dread I had never experienced gripped me, the deep monotone of Sain’s voice increasing the fear.
“The one bred to die.”
It wasn’t me who was screaming. It wasn’t me who was mourning. It wasn’t her body in my arms. It wasn’t.
Not anymore.
Joclyn screamed in panic and pain as Ryland lifted her over his shoulder, his face streaming with tears as he walked away from something I could not see. Ovailia’s laugh reverberated in my head as the cave formed around the scene, the broken rocks shifting as everything fell, as everything broke apart.
Underneath it all, I lay, spread out over the rocks, blood seeping from my body like a river, a crimson stain spreading over the grey stone I lay on.
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