Free

Iris

After a few minutes, we're still wrapped up in a three-way hug when a familiar feeling floods through my body, sending my head spinning and my heart lurching. My vision blurs as new images begin to form in my head. New sounds fill my ears, indistinct and unfamiliar.

"Are you okay?" I hear Sky ask. Her voice sounds faraway and distant.

"I'm having a vision," I gasp out. I clench my eyes shut to see the pictures more clearly, pressing my hands to my forehead. "A really powerful one... But it's so vague-"

I feel myself lower into a crouch. I'm dimly aware that above me, Sky is looking at Cressida nervously.

"I don't know," Cressida says.. "It wasn't as serious as this before..."

I block them out as an image finally comes into focus in my mind. The sun... Setting. Falling slowly from the sky, letting the night drag it away from the beautiful sky. It sinks out of sight behind the mountains, until its last light has died into blackness. The night rules the sky once more.

"The sun," I breathe. "It's setting... The day is almost done..."

"Oh... Okay," Sky says, her voice slow with confusion. I sense that Cressida doesn't understand either, but then her thoughts clear as the realisation hits her. She knows what it means. And she's as scared as I am.

The day is almost done...

"What?" Sky asks anxiously. "What is it?"

Before Cressida can answer, I gasp again. The images have began to change. In the place of the sun is a full moon, floating in the inky sea above. A wavering sound slices through the night; a long, melancholy howl. Several dark shapes race over the hills, their eyes gleaming brightly through the darkness.

"Wolves!" I cry out. "The red-eyed wolves... She's here- She's looking-"

"What red-eyed wolves?" Sky demands, frustrated. I can tell that not being able to understand is annoying her greatly.

Prophesying is a branch of magic that's very different to fairy magic. Even magic as powerful as Sky's was is pretty precise; there's an exact method of getting it to work, and once you master it, you can pretty much do anything. But mind-magic? It's basically one huge riddle with a million answers. I suppose the complexity must be difficult for Sky to grasp, the way I had started to struggle to adjust to her magic. Now I had experienced it myself, I had no idea how Sky had managed to handle it for so long. Even when the power became dark, she had still kept some element of control over it. I know that if I had had her fairy magic for much longer, it would have slipped away from me completely.

I try unsteadily to explain. "They're hers... Cressida, do you remember the... The wolf that chased us, the night we left- Lilith's cottage? One of h-hers, remember? She uses them to- to track people. That must've been how she found out that we were g-going to Orbis."

"So if you saw one in your vision..." Cressida says slowly.

"She's hunting us," I start to straighten up, opening my eyes again. The pictures are fading; the vision seems to have passed. "She has the most powerful fairy magic in existence and she's hunting us. We have to find a way out of here now."

"How?" Cressida asks. "We don't even have the mirror... What happened to the mirror? Is it still in Orbis?"

I furrow my brow, thinking. "Lilith used it to create the Underworld Portal... Did she ever let go of it?"

We stare at each other, then a haunting sound penetrates the silence, making us jump. The howl of a wolf.

"I thought the wolves in your vision were just a metaphor!" Sky yelps, looking at me.