Interstellar Ross

Chapter 17 A Painful Revelation

Hecate's Realm

Season of thunder

Flaming torches that burned despite the rain guided a path into the woods. The clouds gathered above were darkening with every second I stood beneath them.

"Thanks." I looked down at the cat at my feet.

She meowed loudly before running past me and leaping through a ring of green light.

Dimitri, Tiberius and Bryn each looked around curiously from behind me.

"I feel the magic here." Dimitri flexed his fingers. "This is definitely the place."

"Let's get this over with." Tiberius marched forward, following the torch lit path.

I hung back. "Hey, do you still have those deck of cards?" I questioned Bryn.

"Yeah." She retrieved them from a pouch at her belt.

"Could I borrow them, they seem to trigger a lot of memories for me."

"Keep 'em." She handed them over. "They were yours anyway, you gave them to me a while back." She started walking behind Dimitri and Tiberius.

I shuffled the cards in my hands as I slowly walked behind them, not bothering to shield myself from the pouring rain. My hair was the least of my concerns.

I pulled out 'The Priestess' from the pack, feeling like it was the most accurate card to describe the powerful Goddess we planned to meet. I held it up in front of me, eyeing the woman wrapped in white cloth and holding the bleeding heart of what was most likely a man. Fire burned at her back, the smoke warped into twisted figures of evil and tortured souls. I sensed a presence approaching from behind me and I turned, capturing a not so older version of myself running past my present self. My hair was long, and my body wrapped in only a thin shift dress of white material, the dress and my hair bellowing behind myself as I ran fast and barefoot across the path.

At first, I stood rather shocked as my past self-became lost behind a turn in the path behind thick trunked trees.

I slid the card back into the deck and took off after myself. I had lost considerable ground, but I ran fast enough that I could just make out the white fabric of my dress in the distance.

"Hey, what's going on?" Bryn asked as I caught up with them and their walking pace.

"I've been here before." I answered between deep breaths, picking up the pace as I pace as I passed them. I heard the three of them begin to run after me.

I continued up a steep rocky slope, ascending the precarious path to the peak of a cliff. I slowed, taking in the quaint looking hut that appeared near invisible against the earthy tones of green and brown forestation.

My past self-banged on the door feverishly. "Hecate!" I screamed. "Hecate! I need your help!"

I approached tentatively as Hecate from my past opened the door, looking every bit like the tarot card in my hands.

"You dare ask favours of me?" Her voice was deep and resonant, a mere testament to her formidable power.

"We're all in danger." My past self panted from running. "The white rabbits have found me."

Hecate frowned. "And you came here? How do you know they haven't followed you?"

"I don't." I answered. "I jumped through fifty different portals to get here, I left people I cared about behind."

"You're careless." Hecate was very unimpressed.

"If they can find me, they can find you. Please help me disappear, and when I am gone for so long, they will stop looking for me and they won't find out you're here."