Court of Snakes: This Desert Cage

Old Magick - The Tavern | June of the First Year

"Take the cards," The King compelled, and relinquished to Terran, who was seated in his usual chair, the deck of cards that were always hidden away in The King's secret coat pocket. He shoved them into Terran's hands and gazed at him, like a sailor looking for land on the horizon. "What do you feel?"

Terran glanced at the ever-shifting deck and wondered what his teacher meant. "They're just paper to me. I—"

"You're not trying."

"I don't understand what you expect of me. All this paper card mumbo jumbo doesn't make a lick of—"

"It's not mumbo jumbo, Terran. I haven't been running around the city for years doing silly parlor tricks on the side of the road for a few coins. This is real, and this is dangerous," The King barked, stood, and seized a piece of old cloth that hung from one of the posts of the bed. He moved behind Terran and blindfolded him, continuing, "Now. Focus."

Terran took a deep breath and struggled to understand why The King would put him through such a horrible, boring, pointless exercise. The cloth smelled of mildew, dust, and old blood, and Terran suspected the whole endeavor would result in nothing but—

Suddenly, his chest constricted as though he had hit water from a great height, solid as concrete. A bright light exploded into his field of vision, even though he was blindfolded, and a rush of images darted across the forefront of his mind. His brain cultivated images more vivid than he ever dreamt possible and the realness of it all was nauseating as he lurched to a stop, now standing in a room he knew.

Time travel, Terran reasoned, was impossible. No one could go back to reverse or prevent the events of the past, so how was it possible for him to stand in a room he had not entered in months? The last time he had visited that room, his mother had asked him what he wanted for his birthday. Terran took a moment to look around, trying to understand the illusion he had fallen into, when he stopped at a sound. Two people conversed on the balcony in the place that looked like his home. Terran could not be sure of anything. Everything was blurred and distorted, like in a dream.

The couple whispered soft, tender words to each other, love nested into their eyes, but Terran could not hear what they said, words distorted by the watery essence of it all. He could tell by the softness of their mouths that they were words of compassion. Something clicked behind him. He spun to watch an Elite guard emerge from the doorway and draw a rifle, the emblazoned symbol of the Embassy on his chest. His finger twitched on the trigger.

Bang!

The throne room. Streets of Naa'a. The Embassy. Blood. Bullets. A letter signed with red ink sopped up from the floor. The royal seal. Hands around his throat. Terran stared straight into the face of Lord Talbot, someone who had worked closely with Terran's mother, and Talbot had his hands tightly around Terran's throat.

CLASH! Terran scattered the cards about the room as if they had burned his skin and ripped off the blindfold. He found that his forehead dripped with sweat and that his hands quaked unbearably as he returned to reality, seated in The King's study. He glared at The King with accusing eyes and shoved the blindfold onto the desk. "What was that?" he demanded.

"They showed you clarity, your purpose," The King explained and raised a hand. The cards fluttered up off the ground of their own accord and placed themselves, one at a time, into the palm of his hand. Terran scanned the room, attempting to discover the source of the trick.

"My purpose?" he retorted.

The King reclined again in his own chair, feet up on the table, and shuffled the cards. "You have no family, no home," he said. "So what did you expect? You were just going to help me with the Embassy, but then what, hm? Where would you go after?"