Dawn of Ash

by Rebecca Ethington

  The grey stone I had died on.

  “What?” I heard my voice breaking in the sight, the echo of past having a whole different meaning, given what I was now looking at, given the horrors of a future I now faced.

  I could feel the voices of the Drak run over me, could feel the sight come to an end, but I couldn’t look away from the image of my death.

  I couldn’t look away from the blood.

  Pain I didn’t fully understand drenched me in a force that sent a crippling ache over my chest. The ache grew as the vision faded away, leaving me gasping in the void, my hands clenching my hair.

  “This is sight.” The haunting sounds of the child’s voice moved around the white void I had returned to.

  “No!” I screamed, the volume of my voice reverberating with pressurized power. “No!”

  “You have been born for something different than you assumed.”

  “What do you mean? What is this?” I yelled into the nothingness, spinning in place as I tried to find the owner. My magic stretched away from me in an attempt to find Joclyn. Nothing was there. Even though I had the distinct impression Joclyn was close, I still could not see her. I could not see anyone who could be speaking to me.

  As before, it was empty.

  “Everything you have been told is a lie. I have shown you truth.”

  My chest tightened painfully as she spoke, the dread and fear running through me, keeping a tight grip on my heart.

  “Your life, your death, how you die, how you live, why you have the magic you do—”

  “I won’t accept this!”

  “It was all a lie.” The voice was a hiss now, and I could barely focus through the dread, through the anxiety that had taken control.

  “No!” I yelled, my anger truly out of control now. “I won’t let it be.”

  “Why do you say that?” the voice came again.

  I spun toward it, coming face-to-face with a child this time. A little girl with bright blue eyes and dark curls down to her waist stood before me as if she had always been there, her head cocked to the side, as if I was the most interesting thing she had ever seen.

  “You will die,” she said, her voice light and calm, more reminiscent of how someone discussed food than the death of a loved one.

  Eyes wide as I fumed, I attempted to control my anger, but I already knew it was a lost cause.

  “Then I will die,” I fumed, staring at the little girl with more anger than a child her age should ever see. “But I will not accept that I was born for something other than to protect the one I love.”

  “Is that all?” the girl said with a smile, her curls bobbing as she took a step closer to me. “You will protect her, Ilyan Krul—of that, the sight is clear. But you will fail, and nothing can be done to change that. It is your choice if you continue to stand by her, if you continue on the path of what is true, or if you choose to find your own.”

  “Find my own path?” I gasped, not understanding what she meant. I had seen my death. There was no other option.

  “There is always another choice in this life. There is always a chance to fix what was broken,” she said with a smile, her nose wrinkling familiarly. “Will you choose to protect her?”

  “I will.” The words came without hesitation, the strong presence of her magic within me seeming to warm at the simple declaration, my heart beating right alongside. “I love her. I love her more than I have any other, and that love … I will fight for her no matter what comes our way. I will stand by her, no matter what demons she faces, for she is of my heart, and I am of hers. I will protect her until my blood spills over those rocks as I take my last breath, and I will treasure every moment I have with her. No matter what comes.” I spoke to the child as I would to an enemy, my voice heavy and deep as my heart opened up, as I spilled out every emotion and desire and fear. As I let this tiny child see me.

  “That is what I was hoping you would say.” She smiled as the love and magic continued to swell inside of me. Her grin was wide as if I had said something more than what was in my heart.

  “Does Joclyn know of this change?” I asked with trepidation, my heart thundering inside my chest with the truth of what this revelation could mean and what I did not want Joclyn to worry over. I would always be by her side. I didn’t want to give her any reason to doubt it would ever change.

  “You are true, Ilyan Krul.”

  My question lingered between us as the void faded back to the black, back to the flashes of sight which moved so fast I could barely see them. One vision blended into the next as my head throbbed, my body aching as if someone was pulling me into a stutter without warning.

  Gasping at what I was seeing, my mouth opened in the same wide scream of before. A deep, hollow voice echoed in my mind against the agony my scream held, against the fear that had debilitated me.

  “The magic was spread too wide but has been returned,” the voice began, the scream fading to nothing as my own voice joined it, the dead, hollow tones foreign and frightening. “The son will rise, the son will fall, and all the blood will cease to flow. The time is now. It grows too late. Kill the fool before the slate. Love no longer seeks revenge. You will seek the end to end.”

  I gasped as the words finished, as the black of the world and the depth of the sight faded into the room I called home where everything erupted in noise and panic.

  Dramin lay on the floor, mumbling about sight and white rooms. A panicked Ryland hovered over him. Jaromir sat, crying in the corner, looking around at each of us as though we were possessed, something I was confident was very possible given what had happened.

  The weight I had been missing dropped into my arms as Joclyn’s magic ebbed away, the flow of it lessening as I returned to reality, returned to her sleeping body that still lay against me.

  “Joclyn?” I asked, my fears moving a million miles an hour in an attempt to understand what was going on. Everything felt like a distorted dream on this side.

  She lay there, unmoving, as Dramin’s mumbling increased, the frantic shout from Ryland growing louder and louder.

  “Ilyan!” he practically shouted, pulling my focus from Joclyn. Fear was etched so deeply on his face I was certain the lines would never fade. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know,” I said in a panic, hating the lack of control I had, hating that I couldn’t give him more of an answer. The truth of what I had seen and what I was now facing was a confusing mess within me.

  “We need to go.” Joclyn’s voice erupted before me, the tone as deep as what I had heard in the sight moments before.

  Heart racing, I looked down, part of me expecting everything to be normal, but her eyes were still as black as they had been before, her face as blank.

  “We cannot wait.” she said as she sat up in my lap, her hand soft against my bare chest, her black eyes staring into me with a terror I never thought I would experience while looking at the woman I loved.

  Ryland froze where he knelt on the floor.

  An equally as shocked Dramin looked from me to Joclyn in terrifying wonder.

  “Jos?” Ryland asked, his voice shaking as he stared at the girl who looked like she belonged in a horror movie.

  “Ilyan,” Joclyn spoke to me as if no one else was in the room, no one else had spoken. “We must go … before it is too late.”

  “Go where?” I could barely get the words out. “Joclyn?”

  “Ilyan,” she said again, her voice bleeding into a deep panic as the black faded from her eyes, leaving me staring at the beautiful silver. “Ovailia is here. We need to stop her. We need to stop them both.”

  She had barely spoke before the cathedral erupted in screams, before the pained shouts of hundreds of dying people seeped through the walls and into me.

  “Get them away from the door,” she whispered, and then she was gone, vanished into the air with the tiniest of pops. The sound ricocheted in my ears as Dramin and Ryland looked at me, their faces full of the same awe and
confusion I felt.

  I didn’t know what else to do. I jumped from the bed, following the pulse of her magic, following the screams, and hoping now was not the end I had seen.

  That now was not when I would die.

  I still had a purpose, after all.

  I lay, enfolded in Ilyan’s arms, facing the same vision of myself that had stood with me in the sight I had been unable to escape.

  The haunted apparition stood between where Ryland paced and Dramin sat, blood dripping over her face, hands covered with ash. Her body was unseen to any of them, their reality untouched by my sights.

  I didn’t dare move as I watched her, the space around me shifting in and out of sight as it had since Wyn had run away from me. Images of the future, of Edmund laughing, rippled through my mind before they were gone, leaving me staring at my own blood-drenched face.

  “It is almost over,” the woman said as Ryland paced through the room, his temper increasing with each step he took.

  “I know,” I whispered, the weakness that had overtaken my body making it difficult to talk too loudly. “I have seen it before.”

  “Are you going to fight?” the woman asked, cocking her head to the side a bit, as if she was a curious dog surveying a snack.

  Shaking my head, another sight washed over me, this one of Wyn and Ovailia standing together near the main gate of the cathedral.

  My heart stopped at the sight of them there, at the sight of them together, Wyn’s attack of moments ago still fresh and painful in my mind.

  Even though she had attacked me, even though she had run, I knew it wasn’t her, not really. Stubbornly, I refused to accept what Wyn had done, that she could be working for Edmund. It couldn’t be. Yet, the two women stood together in my sight, Wyn jerking and twitching as she had before she had attacked me.

  Before I saw any more, the glimpse of sight left, leaving my chest heaving with exertion, my eyes focused on the woman before me again.

  “I have been fighting,” I snapped at her, continuing the conversation as though the infectious sights hadn’t pulled me away. “I’m going to keep fighting.”

  “This is why we are who we are.”

  I looked at her as she spoke, my frustrations leveling out at the deep lull to her voice.

  Ryland ran across the room to where Dramin was, his motions panicked as he yelled toward Ilyan and me, but I barely saw. I felt my magic as it accelerated, pulling me deep inside of it, drowning me in it.

  “And who are we?”

  “We are Drak.” The woman’s voice was deep and hollow again, her black eyes focused somewhere far beyond me. “We are power.”

  Her words faded as I was pulled back into a world that shifted and spun around me as a carrousel of images enveloped me, blocking the room and the woman from view and trapping me in a disturbing, shifting array.

  Attempting to focus my magic, to harness my sight before I got lost in it, I only grew weaker, the pain in my head growing stronger.

  “Now you must fight.” The woman’s voice broke through the images, broke through the pain in a confusing rumble I didn’t quite understand.

  No matter how hard I fought the magic, fought the sight, it was no use. I was trapped in it, trapped in the powerful torrent that flashed and shifted, the images broken up with the familiar static that had haunted me so over the past few months. I wanted to scream as the ominous sounds controlled me. But no shout came. I was trapped in the tornado of sounds and sights, my soul sagging and breaking under the weight.

  “Now we must fight.” The voice came again, deep and powerful.

  As she spoke, a magic I had never felt before moved into me, moved alongside my own. The weakness that had incapacitated me seeped away, dripping from my body as though I was nothing more than an over-wrung towel.

  “Fight it!” The shout was loud in my head as the sights that bombarded me slowed, as the static began to fade. The grating sound of the buzz was replaced by the shouts of a voice I knew all too well, one that seized me, my anger and agitation flaring violently.

  “You can never take away what I am!” my father screamed. “I won’t allow it!”

  His voice was broken by the static, the ebb and flow of it swelling as the sights continued to move into me.

  “Fight him!”

  I wanted to scream that I was trying, that I was fighting, but I didn’t know what I was fighting against. I didn’t know what was happening. It was all I could do to stay focused on the sights, to keep myself breathing.

  “I won’t let you!” my father shouted again through the panic, another voice mixing alongside his.

  Dramin’s sobs echoed against Ilyan’s pleas. It was noise as I watched the flash of fire, watched blood flow over rocks. My heart strained to keep up with the force of it. My mind and body was exhausted as I fought the weight that held me down.

  And yet, the unfamiliar magic grew, the power grew. My power grew.

  “Fight it.” The voice came again, my magic flexing alongside the unfamiliar strain pulsing into me with a frightening energy.

  “Fight it!”

  This time, I screamed. I screamed as I heaved. I screamed as the magic swelled, as it pushed against me. I screamed as others did, the sound so loud in my ears I couldn’t think beyond it. It was only me and noise, my body wrapped tightly like an infant, the weight a comforting staple against what I was surrounded by. What was infecting me.

  And then it was gone.

  Then it was silence.

  I looked up with a snap, my eyes wide in expectation as my bedroom came into focus, but the blood-soaked woman was no longer there. I sat alone with Ryland, Ilyan, and Dramin frozen in the room I had left, as if they had been glued there, the tension of the environment infecting me.

  I sat still, waiting for something to happen, but there was nothing except the foreign magic that continued to swell within me, winding through mine in a way that, at any other time, would feel uncomfortable. This felt right, however.

  This felt strong and beautiful … and, somehow, recognizable.

  The magic increased as the room stirred, a sight overlaying the space in a double vision I had seen consistently since Wyn’s first attack, since I had watched the barrier pop days before. But this time, I wasn’t lost in the shadow of past and future. This time, everything made sense, my mind open and free as it saw and understood everything with perfect clarity.

  “The magic was spread too wide but has been returned.” A chorus of voices rumbled through me as my sight took me to the pool of Imdalind. My vision held as I watched the surface break and grow. A wave of movement spread over the top, and eight bodies emerged.

  I caught a glimpse of their heads before the image shifted like a flipbook, flashes of hundreds of people I had never seen before swimming across my eyes. My magic whispered to me as I began to recognize them, to recognize the family line, father to son and son to father. Even though none of the faces were familiar, I knew them. I recognized a nose, the green of their eyes. I saw my family for the first time.

  I gasped in shock as the sight faded to nothing other than a bright red light, the color sliding down my vision like paint.

  “The son will rise, the son will fall, and all the blood will cease to flow. The time is now. It grows too late. Kill the fool before the slate.”

  I gazed into the long, red drips of black and red as they moved over me. The red faded to nothing, while the black encompassed the words in my head, my own voice speaking right alongside them.

  “Love no longer seeks revenge. The time has come to write your end.”

  The scream stopped as the voices did, the sight fading away until I was left staring at the cracked ceiling I woke up to every morning. Time caught up and moved into overdrive as the voices flooded around me, dread and fear infecting me like some kind of noxious disease.

  As I looked from Ilyan to Ryland, the overlay of sight cast itself over them with perfect clarity. My mind moved quicker than it ever had. It was as though ev
erything was unleashed. It was as though everything was free.

  Ovailia walked through the cathedral within my mind, Wyn conspicuously missing as she strode into our makeshift hospital. My magic was strong as it pulled me right to her, confirming what my sight had already revealed.

  “We need to go,” I spoke over the terror, everything freezing as I sat up from where I lay in Ilyan’s lap. My sight was still focused on where Ovailia and Sain stood side-by-side. “We cannot wait.”

  There was one reason they would be here. No, there was one reason they would be in that room … with all of those Chosen.

  “Ilyan.” Pulling my focus from where Ovailia and Sain stood in tense conversation, I looked to my mate whose eyes were wide in shock. “We must go … before it is too late.”

  “Go where?” He was so tense, the fear so raw on his face it scared me. “Joclyn?”

  “Ilyan,” I gasped as I looked at him, letting the sight fade from me and bringing him into a clearer focus. His face relaxed with the change, the brightness of his eyes taking my breath away. “Ovailia is here. We need to stop her. We need to stop them both.”

  With the last word, the screams I had been dreading filled the air. The agonizing shouts erupted in a torrent that sent my magic screaming in desperation.

  “Get them away from the door,” I gasped, sight and magic erupting in a swell of power that took me right where I needed to be, where I hoped Ilyan would follow.

  Ribbons of time zoomed through the space of the stutter in bright, colorful strips that I paid no attention to. My focus was solely on what was ahead—the room that opened up at the end of the tunnel, the space growing brighter as I moved closer. The sound of their screams increased with every moment, resonating with a haunting fear that cut through me, the smell of death and smoke hitting against me like a wall.

  A jolt of pressure rippled up my spine, the once peaceful hospital emerging around me as the stutter fell away to a room engulfed in flames of red and orange, painful tongues of fire lapping against the people as they screamed, as death tried to take them.

  The powerful shield I had covered myself with was barely enough to keep the fire from consuming me. The burn tried to move into me as smoke filled my nostrils. Clothing and hair were burned away, the pungent aroma adding to the rancid smell of death that already filled the space.