Striking a finger across his still-sharp teeth, he succeeded in a tiny cut that he held over the bottle. I expected the drop to splash in and maybe tinge the water the tiniest bit, but the moment the brilliant red landed, the entire vial began to glow a bright silver.
Thankfully, Bronn didn’t drop it in surprise, and I took it from him, holding it over the top of the fire. Just like Davie had said, I poured it over the flames, allowing myself to slowly lower my hand as they diminished, until the blaze was completely out.
We were so close. My heart was thundering in my chest, and my stomach was doing its own trapeze act. I took a couple steps until I was right over the wispy, purple smoke, and breathed in deep.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, maybe an ashy sort of smell or slight burn, but surprisingly, the smoke smelled almost like incense in fancy shops. I didn’t let that distract me, however, and exhaled long and low.
Reaching down into the bowl, I grabbed the scale. Sure enough, it didn’t burn me, although smoke did rise from my hands. I paid it no mind, instead gripping it with all I had and cracking it right in two.
The rush of energy that burst from it electrified me, and I found myself shouting words that I hadn’t planned.
“Daniella Masters, I summon you to this realm, to this life!” The ground began to shake, and the stars above seemed to wink in and out of existence, but I didn’t even let that give me pause. I could feel that something great was happening. Something that would completely change the course this world, and even all worlds.
“Daniella Masters, I summon you now! Break your chains and come home!”
A crack of lightning shot down from the sky, striking the bowl right in the center. Debris went flying everywhere and I was thrown across the field, but as I flew, I could only wonder one thing:
Had it worked?
16
Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked
Davie
Whoever said they would go on vacation when they were dead was having a heck of a lot easier afterlife than I was.
I remembered the last moments of my life with sparkling clarity, as if the memory was recorded in slow motion so I could see every single detail. The hurt, shocked, and betrayed look on my sister’s face as Bronn grabbed her slight form and pulled her backward. The utter guilt on the prince’s face as he looked over his shoulder at me for what would be the last time. The thrum of the dragons surging up behind me. The pounding of my heart. The feeling of crystal climbing up my body, eating away at the life energy within me.
And then there was nothing. I was floating in oblivion with no time, thought, or sensation. It was a strange form of non-existence, and restful, but I had no idea how long it lasted.
Not long enough.
The next thing I knew, I was hurtling up toward light and color, but the world I emerged in was like none other I had ever experienced.
Everything was swirling light, colors, and vibrating energy. The best I could describe it was as some sort of pastel-rainbow-neon miasma that swirled and moved constantly, arching off away from me in a steady rush of motion.
I sat on that island for a while. Although I say ‘sat’ metaphorically. I didn’t really have a body, so to speak. I wasn’t even sure if I was really seeing everything around me, or just feeling it. All I knew was that anything and everything was kaleidoscopic swirls around me.
After a while, I began to hear things, taste things, feel things. It started off as the whisper of a sound rising from the energy churning by. It almost sounded like a wish…or even a prayer. Sometime later, there was a tantalizing cool breeze that danced over my mind. Then, even later, I thought I saw the wobbly, impressionistic interpretation of a face’s reflection float by.
That was when I knew that there were stories in the miasma, and I wanted to know them.
I couldn’t tell you how long I stayed there, stranded on that tiny island of whatever it was, trying to move, trying to do anything, but I was locked into a spectator’s position, doomed to see all but never experience.
As the time passed, I got a whole lot better at seeing, or whatever it was that I was doing. Those whispers turned into mumbles, and then words, and then full sentences that I could hear from beginning to end. Those faces clarified, and stilled, allowing me to watch the toll of the years as it marched across their features. The breezes turned into full-on sensations, hot and cold, satisfaction and loss.
It seemed like an age until I was finally able to move forward. Step by tenuous step, or maybe I was crawling? It wasn’t like I could tell, but somehow, I managed to bring myself to the precipice of my dark little chunk of land, my face bathing in the light of the energy flow.
It swirled blue, then purple, then pink, then to the deepest, darkest navy I had ever seen before flashing through all of them. It beckoned me, like a stupid fly to a bug zapper, and I knew that I needed to get in no matter what I did.
So, I mustered up whatever I had left in myself and pushed myself over the edge.
There were no words for what I experienced. It was like lightning coursing through every single part of every cell in my body while simultaneously being dunked in cold water. It was like I was getting tickled all over, but also a full body massage. It was everything amazing I had ever felt when I was alive, but also each and every terrible thing I had endured.
My mind went blank, overwhelmed by the sensations, and once again, I couldn’t say how long I stayed like that, swept up in the violent, perfect rush of whatever I was in.
But just like before, clarity came with time, and I found myself looking out of the slipstream as I shot through it.
What I saw there… I could try to explain it for hundreds of years and never get there. I saw world after world, all in different times. I saw the birth of new seers, arriving into the world crying and cursed, and I saw them die, their energy returning to the same stream I was slipping through.
That was right about when I finally realized exactly where I was. This was the energy that had been mentioned so many times. The way my ancestors from all those millennia ago had cut through dimensions and made new paradises in the hope of an escape from the terrible, malevolent beast that had to ruin everything.
It was like that revelation fully opened my eyes, and suddenly, I found myself able to control the situation. I could change how I moved and where I looked. I was no longer a floating stowaway in the interdimensional rush I was swept up in. No, I was the conductor.
The first thing I did was try to look for my friends, because of course, who would get the gift of near-omnipotent knowledge and not check on their loved ones? But when I searched for them, I could only see the faintest glimmer of them. The rest of their forms were almost completely obscured by a large, thick shadow.
I thought perhaps it was just because I was still learning, so I decided to try to go back and learn more about the people who started it all. The only thing about that was that it was a whole lot more difficult to search for things that weren’t connected to my time.
It’s difficult to describe, but the best I can manage was that in the stream, there were certain strands of energy that glowed brighter than the others and were easier to grasp. These threads always turned out to be somewhat related to me, and when I did grip them, they would drag me to a scene from my past, or what might have been my future.
The future was always the most difficult. I saw scene after scene, all of them stolen by me from the greed for more power.
I saw Bronn and I, kissing in the moonlight, clear stream water up to our laps as we danced. I saw Mickey in a wedding dress, looking absolutely stunning. I saw Mallory winning championships and making a name for herself.
At first, these moments made me happy, seeing all the wonderous things that had been a possibility for me, but then they made me incredibly depressed.
I could have had so much. There was such joy and learning to be had, but it had all been snatched from my hands in the blink of an eye. I didn’t regret my decision for
a minute, and I’d do it again if my friends needed it, but it made me angry that I even had to face that choice in the first place.
I wish I could say that the happy moments kept playing and I overcame the issue to feel contentment, but that’s not what happened. I was reaching for one of those luminous threads when suddenly, it stabbed through me like a spear. I was right out of the beautiful energy vortex and right back on that hill, my body suspended above the ground, hanging limply by the crystals impaling my chest.
I didn’t think I’d ever experienced as pure a terror as I did in that moment. I tried to scream, but my mouth wouldn’t open. In fact, I wasn’t even breathing. I was truly afraid that this was my afterlife and the energy had only been an enjoyable purgatory.
But then the dark, onyx sky lit up in a series of sparkling lights and began to play a scene like it was a giant screen at the theater.
I saw a world, my world, my city, set aflame. There was crumbling ruins everywhere, and noxious fumes blocking out entire chunks of the scene. I wanted to gasp, or turn away, but I couldn’t.
Because I was dead.
So, I just watched the utter chaos and destruction across the sky. I saw places I had grown up reduced to ashes, I saw bodies and carnage. I saw sadness, loss, and misery.
But I didn’t lose it until the castle came into view, the image coming closer and closer until I could see everything in disturbing detail.
I saw the half-charred body of the maid who always gave me attitude as she held the quiet maid who never said anything. I saw the quiet librarian with one of his arms ripped from his body. I saw faces I remembered, but didn’t have names for, all of them pale with death.
Terror gripped me as it took me to the upper floors, where I knew those I loved stay.
What had been Mallory’s parents’ room was just a blackened floor with no walls. For the briefest of seconds, I hoped that maybe they had gotten away, but then everything changed.
I was no longer watching some strange, voyeuristic display of the scene. Instead, I was walking through it, ash under my bare and bloody feet.
I was tempted to just stand there and close my eyes so that I couldn’t see or feel anything else, but something forced me forward. So, I turned, and I saw two forms huddled together in the bathroom, little more than ash held together by who knew what.
I gasped and this time, it worked, allowing oxygen to fill my deflated lungs. That itself jolted me, and I was able to run out of the room.
But two forms was good, right? That meant that Mallory had been able to get away. I mean, it was sad, alright, but I had survived without my parents.
I couldn’t wait for the response anymore and I rushed to my old room. I hoped and prayed they would be there, hiding in some sort of cubby or having escaped out of a window.
After all, they were a seer, a dwarf, and a long-term survivor of a dragon apocalypse. That had to be a recipe for survival. It had to be!
I almost reached the top of the stairs when I saw the doors. Or at least what was left of the doors. One was hanging off its hinges, the top half broken off. The other was completely missing. It felt like I was dying all over again as I rushed forward.
Absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what awaited. I saw damage everywhere, clothes on the ground, the bed tipped over, books strewn this way and that. It was clear whatever fight had happened had been against bipedal, humanoid forms.
I took a step in, glass crunching, and the sharp smell of blood filled my nose. I almost turned right then and there, but I had to know.
I took another step only for my shoe to hit something soft. Looking down, I screamed with everything I had, my mind going blank as I kicked away the arm that I had stepped on.
I couldn’t do anything for several moments, only stand there and breathe raggedly. There was only one person I knew who was that skinny and that scarred. It had to be Mal.
A few more steps and a lone shoe was in front of me. This time, I didn’t scream, but I wanted to. Mostly because the shoe wasn’t empty.
What had they done to her?! What could she have done to deserve being ripped apart?!
My dead heart was throbbing violently, and every second, I was asking myself to just turn around and go back, but I couldn’t. I had to know. A force was pushing me around the bed, past body parts of a girl I had gotten to know over our imprisonment together.
I wish I had listened to myself.
I rounded the corner of the bed and tears burst from my eyes. Laying there on the floor, her head bent at an unnatural angle, was Mallory. I saw blood and cuts on her knuckles, and even up her forearms. She had put up one heck of a fight. Of course she did.
But it wasn’t enough.
I knelt down, smoothing her hair out of her sunken face and folding her battered hands over her chest. This wasn’t the future I saw for her in the stream. Why was this happening?
I just sat there and cried for several minutes, overwhelmed with feelings. It wasn’t until I was able to catch my breath that I noticed two people were missing.
“Mickey!” I cried, jumping to my feet. “Bronn!”
I bolted out of the room, hoping and praying that somehow, they had escaped. I ran everywhere, never stopping, never slowing, but I couldn’t find them at all.
It wasn’t until I was out on the landing, collapsing to my knees, that I heard steps approaching me.
I shot to my feet, fists ready, but I quickly froze.
“You’re not going to find them here.”
“W-w-what the hell are you?” I sputtered, staring with wide eyes.
I had seen a lot of things in my life and un-life, but never had I met another me. That was exactly who was standing in front of me, however, from head to toes an exact copy of me.
Well, maybe not exact. Her eyes were cold and the smile on her face was a sickly, predatory one that I didn’t think I would ever be able to emulate.
“What? Are you saying you do not recognize me?”
“I-I…”
“Anyway, in case you want some context to this beautiful scene I’ve set up for you, this is what happens when those determined dragons take over this castle from your blood-traitor boyfriend.
“You’ll find that pretty much everyone is dead, but not your precious sister. Even with all the trouble your little lot gave them, a seer is a precious tool. I expect she’s locked up in some cage at their headquarters, telling them the best ways to defeat the last of the scourges. In time, she will tell them how to break down the barrier between the dimensions. You’re really not going like that part. Shall we both take a step into the future?”
“No!” I shot forward, and the two of us went tumbling backward. Suddenly, it was like time was rewinding in fast motion, moving backward through the mansion until I was just hanging on my crystalline deathbed once again.
But then that disappeared too, and I was falling again until I landed once more in the land between realms.
I groaned, but honestly, the pain felt pretty nice compared to not experiencing anything for so long, but as I scrambled to my feet, I heard those same calm footsteps approaching me.
“Ah, home again.”
I looked up to see that it was me standing there, looking just as superior as before. That was when it clicked exactly who this doppelgänger was.
“You’re the rotted dragon!” I exclaimed, stumbling backward.
“Aw, come now, I have a name, you know.”
‘No… Actually, I didn’t.”
“Well then, let me introduce myself, Miss Davie Masters. I am Mana’akua, once known as the great conqueror, uniter, and father to all. I’m so glad you found it in you to join me again. I have great plans for you.”
He reached for me, his hand, my hand, beginning to rot away at the tips, and I threw my arms up.
“No!” I cried, stumbling backward and back into the slipstream. It took me far, far away from that place, but I knew it was worrisome that it could find me at all. The central hub, the one
that all worlds had once been connected to but had long since been sealed off, was becoming far too easy to find.
And I got the feeling that was exactly what Mana’akua wanted.
It looked like my peaceful afterlife vacation was on hold. I needed to stop him.
17
The Throw Down, Down, Down
Davie
Right about then was when I realized there was a whole lot about the universe and all of the worlds that I needed to learn, and I needed to learn it fast. I wasn’t sure how time worked where I was, whether it was slower or faster, or if it even moved at a constant rate, but I did get the feeling that it was running out.
So, I started gripping more and more of those threads that were harder to hold. Having them wriggle through my fingers like wily snakes that had been lubricated right up. I lost many, I ended up flung across the expanse, but eventually, I managed to grab one in my hold, and then another, and then another, until I was collecting so many possibilities, may-haves, and could-have-beens that a plan finally began to form.
I kept working at it, picking up threads that were dimmer and dimmer and dimmer until finally I stumbled across an old, old, old scene lingering in the stream. It was strangely back in the same library that I had spent so much time in while in Mal’s world.
But this time, it was still being curated and the world wasn’t alight with despair. I was able to watch and learn and absorb until finally, I saw one of the workers reading the book of spells that I suddenly knew I needed.
I remembered focusing on him, wishing that he would turn the pages as I needed, but he just seemed to be perusing. I tried concentrating as hard as I could, willing him and willing him, but in this case, we were both dead and this time had already long passed. I was just watching. If only I could just reach out and—
Power of the Seers Page 9
