A Destroyer!
I recognized his species from the painting that Serena had shown us in the Druid’s house. In the artist’s depiction, the creature had looked monstrous—in real life, up close, it was much worse. I could practically feel the evil radiating off his skin. The room smelt like death, pungent and foul, as if the blood of a million different victims had already been soaked into the floor.
“We know they’re here,” the Destroyer whispered. “He knows they crossed. It will only be a matter of time… surely your life is worth more than this?”
The Destroyer lifted his own finger to his mouth. He bared his teeth, and I watched as two of them elongated and became fangs. He pierced the skin of his own finger, blood running down his hand. Next, he placed the finger on the exposed flesh of the man tied to the table, running it along his chest.
The man screamed again, rising off the table as his spine twisted and arched, desperate to escape. I smelled burning flesh. I turned away, unable to watch someone endure so much. I didn’t know what exactly was causing the pain, but I suspected it was a venom of some kind that had been produced by the Destroyer’s fangs.
I shuddered.
“I don’t know,” the prisoner replied helplessly when his cries had subsided once more. “If I knew anything I would tell you, but I know nothing of a new Oracle.”
“Oracles,” the Destroyer corrected him with a furious hiss. He turned away from the prisoner in disgust, slamming his fist into the stone wall. It shook from the force of the impact, sending dust scattering from the ceiling.
“This is inconvenient,” the Destroyer snarled to himself.
“Let me go.” The prisoner trembled. “I can find out more. I-I can hunt them, find out where they are…”
The Destroyer looked disdainfully down at his prisoner. I tried to get a good look at him too. If the Destroyer agreed to his bargain, then this man would soon come searching for us. I started to move closer, holding my breath, terrified that the Destroyer might be able to sense my presence, even if he couldn’t see me.
The fire produced a lot of smoke, which made it difficult to make out the person on the table behind its flames, but I could see a fan of dark hair and a distinguished-looking profile, with a Roman nose and square jaw. His face was covered in dirt, soot and perspiration, hair matted to his forehead.
“And we would trust you to do such a thing?” the Destroyer questioned him, his tone sneering.
“Yes! I know what he is capable of!” the man cried, moving his head about wildly in order to catch the Destroyer’s eye. “Let me serve you!”
I felt a wave of nausea swimming in my gut, and I knew the vision was about to vanish. I took one last look at the prisoner on the table as the scene before me vanished.
Gasping, I stumbled into the next vision, glad to be moving away from that place. I sighed in relief as I saw the familiar figures of my friends standing in the basement.
“Thank God,” I groaned, walking up to Serena. “That was horrific.”
I frowned, reaching out to hold her arm, but she paid absolutely no attention to me whatsoever. When my fingertips reached her bare arm, I felt her skin, warm and solid, but she still paid no attention to me.
What is happening?
I followed her gaze, and then jumped back in horror. Her eyes were fixed on the metal bathtub. Lying still, and completely submerged under the water, was me.
“When do we pull them out?” Serena asked the Druid, her voice desperate. Her hands clutched the sides of the tub, her knuckles white.
“When they’re ready,” he replied, peering over another of the tubs, staring down at Phoenix, who lay still like I did.
Wake me up now!
I wanted out of this. I felt like the vision was more like a nightmare than anything else—like experiencing sleep paralysis, when all I wanted to do was wake up. Beneath the water my body looked like a dead, drowned thing. My eyes were closed, my hair wafting in the water like seaweed.
I moved past Serena, wondering if I could somehow climb back into my body…I had seen that in a movie once, with ghosts re-inhabiting their bodies to animate themselves. Would that work? I stood bent over the tub, ready to step into it, when Vita suddenly sat bolt upright in the water. Her eyes were wide open, and she started to scream.
Phoenix
[Hazel and Tejus’s son]
My head was pounding, my vision blurring gray at the edges, as if I’d been heavily syphoned from. I kept my eyes closed, waiting for the feeling to subside. When the ache left my temples, I opened my eyes and looked around.
I was standing in a room of the house—the room that the Druid habitually sat in, with the door that led down to the basement. I recognized the windows, and the view out onto the gardens, but everything else was very different. The fire wasn’t lit, for one, and all signs of shabby decay had long gone. The wallpaper was a dusty pale pink. Heavy velvet curtains were drawn aside, letting the sunlight stream in from outside. On either side of the fireplace were bookcases, containing neatly bound leather books, the kind kept more for show than actual reading. The room was also full of furniture—small tables covered in decorative porcelain figurines and lace table mats. The room smelled of polish and freshly varnished wood.