A Host of Fallen Dreams - After the Rising Book 1

Chapter 23

Reannian

The Greenwood

After the announcement made by the Maiden, Mother and Crone Incarnate, the atmosphere within the Temple sanctuary changed, transforming it from a calm and peaceful place to one full of vibrant energy and nervous expectation.

The message given had been a simple one. A Time of Mirroring was coming. A time of change was on the horizon.

What that had meant in exact terms neither of the three faces of the Feminine Divine Incarnate could imagine. After all, they had never dealt with guesses, or speculations, or maybes. They, as the long line of predecessors before them, operated within the realms of prophecy. And destiny and fate never strayed from what had been dreamt. For all intents and purposes, that meant that they worked with fact and solid, set-in-stone outcomes. The only question ever asked was when.

For Megarian to have been called across The Veil by the one she worshipped and represented, indicated just how big and momentous a thing an Age of Awakening was. Moving a person across the boundary that separated the world of the living from the other realms of existence was no trivial matter.

A door had been spoken of, yet from what Megarian had said about keys and locks, it was unclear whether the door was a real door or a metaphorical one. To be told there was a door opening, but that the door wasn't real, led to a further complication in the understanding of what was and wasn't possible. Neither was there any information regarding what was on the other side of it, or who was behind the opening of it and what their motivation might be. As to what might be coming through it...that answer was just as elusive.

It seemed, for the first time in their history, The Temple in The Grove was moving forward blindly. All they could do was search the Library of Prophecies and hope they might stumble across a clue or two.

At least they understood what a Time of Mirroring meant. The study of fortune and destiny was where their expertise lay.

In the Library, there was a special chamber called the Scroll Reading Room, and inside this room to which access was tightly controlled, was the Table of Prophecies. On this table were laid out all the scrolls which were deemed to be "live", or soon to be. That is, scrolls whose prophecies were soon expected to manifest. There were usually a dozen or so scrolls to be found on the table, though the anticipated date of fulfilment could be anywhere from one week to two or three years, and they never came to be in clusters. There was often a sizeable length of time between one and the next, which gave the Temple time to prepare for the prophecy. To be told that there was going to be multiple mirrorings occurring in the same period of time, put a lot of stress on those involved with tending the prophecies and the library.

To make matters more complicated, they had not been given any information to suggest that it was only the prophecies laid out on the Table which were going to be fulfilled. Meaning there was every chance other prophecies, deemed to be far future events, might actually have been brought forward. So the vaults and the archives had to be combed for their potential candidacy for realisation, whilst Megarian also had the forethought to have the eclectic prophecies brought from out of the depository.

There was so much work to do, and so many scrolls and books of commentary on the scrolls to read, that many of those who were involved with the Temple Prophecies, did little else and would do little else for the foreseeable future.

The scrolls themselves were off limits to all but the Maiden, Mother and Crone Incarnate. Even the Mistress of the Scrolls, who watched over the library with a keen eye, was forbidden from attending any of the openings, and was prohibited from reading them.