Ruins In The End (We Three Mages, Book Two)

Chapter Thirty Two: Prophecy

"Mages of Prophecy, Mages of Prophecy, we're the Mages of Prophecy," Nadia repeated over and over. Each time the worry and confusion grew. "This changes literally everything! How could we not notice this sooner, oh gods, how could we make such a huge miscalculation, such a huge mi-mistake!" Nadia ranted to her friends.

"Take three deep breaths," Mari instructed her. "Breathe in, breathe out."

"Okay, I'll bite, why is such a big deal that one word's been changed in our title?" Jared asked.

"Legend refers to myths and fiction, the impossibility," Nadia began to explain. "Prophecy means that everything was foreseen. Someone in Aftemath's time, maybe even the mage himself saw us and who we were going to become. Our entire mission has changed from us willingly using this magic of ours to us following a predetermined path."

"So someone said we were gonna happen, big deal," Jared shrugged.

"Yes it is actually," Nadia turned toward Jared with a strain in her tone. "Just think about it for a second, okay? All this time we thought that what we were doing has been our own free will, but now for all we know our Books could have been leading us on all along!"

"Where on Magistrax is all this coming from?" Mari asked Nadia. Nadia looked at her friend with a scared expression.

"What? What is it?" Mari placed her hands on Nadia's shoulders and looked her dead in the eye.

"Aftemath told me that our Books forged false connections and friendships between us so we wouldn't stop or leave each other at the first sign of trouble. I know that now our friendship is real, I know that, but what if the Books have a greater hold on us than that?"

"Hey, look at me," Mari forced Nadia's attention on her, "I'm not gonna lie, these Books of ours may have had that hold, but not anymore. After all this is over, we'll have Jared look at the bond we have with our Books."

"Me?" Jared pointed at himself.

"Being the Freedom Mage you'll be able to see if our decisions have been influenced by a third party." Mari looked over at her brother.

"Oh right," Jared felt a slight bit of embarrassment.

"I vote we go on an adventure!" Calvin raised his hand and shouted.

"What? Where did that come from?" Mari asked.

"Ah right, you guys couldn't hear my thoughts..." Calvin mumbled. "Well, when Nadia started talking about what a prophecy is and all that jazz, I got to thinking that somewhere in here must be that prophecy, the one outlining everything. So in order to find it, I vote we go on an adventure!"

"You really think that the prophecy is here?" Jared asked.

"He kept some pretty important things here, so why not the prophecy. After all, being cooped up in this place with little outside interaction, there had to be something to remind him why he was doing what he was doing." Calvin answered.

"Adventure it is!" Mari headed down a random corridor.

The first door the five came across was the one that they needed to find.

"I believe that the Temple is working with us, guiding us to where we need to be." Nadia concluded.

"I believe that if we ever give Nadia her own private work space it would look exactly like this." Calvin concluded. There were several workbenches with books, pens, quills, papers, boxes, and so many other items scattered across them. There were tables piled high with several books written in the Ancient Tongue. Towards the back, guarded by a wall of no one wants to know what, was a desk that was spotless. Candles floated in the air and lit should there be any movement nearby. There were bookcases off to the left that had much more than just books piled onto them.