The Prodigies: The Return of Equinox

Chapter Fifty-Eight: A Request

Not long after they had dismissed themselves a person wearing a strange mask had run past them and into the court. Seilan was the first one to return to the room thinking the worst. He hadn't expected to see what he did once he went through the doors again. He saw this person on his knees, begging for help. Any kind of aid.

"Please, I hadn't realized what they were doing until yesterday, and I barely escaped with my life. Please, send in some Prodigies. They're the only hope I have right now, please! You have no idea what they're doing in there!" 

"Excuse me, but who are you?" asked Allyn. He couldn't tell where he even came from. The mask was of a strange make. It had a motif of circular shapes, each one varying in size and overlapping a number of other circles.

"How do you know of the Prodigies?" Archus was nearly screaming. "Who told you?"

"I had foreseen them, they trespassed into the tower and I had prepared a counter attack in quick order. I had improved all of the designs and went feverishly mad at the prospect of invasion. For many years I worked on their arrival. But then I saw it. The reason why. The reason why they trespass upon my sacred tower. The atrocities, the evilness of it, but without no reason. They need to enter the Crea guild tower. They need to kill all who and what resides in there. This is my only warning. If they fail, we are all doomed."

"Who are you!"

"No time! They must go now!" The man turned to the Prodigies behind him. "A message to the ignorant. There is no light at the chambers' underside that which can penetrate. Vision replaced of futures invites broken faith. Gods made of the properties that therein lie are ilk not of blood divine. Hereditable characteristics open resources not of familial assest." He drew a knife and drove it under his jaw and ripped his way down as far as his will power could take him. He died before anyone could gather themselves.

"What the fuck just happened!" Archus was the first to speak. A woman dressed in translucent silk from head to toe walked into the room as the shock of the event began to wear down. While the silhouette of her frame was clearly visible, not much else was given away to the eye. The only thing that was visible was her mouth, which the veil on her face did not cover.

"Oracle! What are you doing here?"

"A better question would be if I had seen anything of these events."

"Have you?"

"I hadn't seen anything until very recently."

"I know that clairvoyance isn't consistent, but you and your sisters have been able to convince me that it could become so. What is the issue here?"

"There is a blindness that I had not encountered in any time before."

"A blindness? What do you mean?" Celesta was the first one to respond out of any in the room.

"When you close one eye, but keep the other open, what do you see?"

"I see what is in front of me."

"Not out of the open one, child, but the closed one. What do you see?" Celesta felt slighted by her comment. The current oracles were just four years older than her at the most. Even so, she allowed it due to the sheer respect she had for what the Oracles did.

Even though Celesta could see in the future at times it was usually no more than a few seconds at a time, and the occasion had no pattern. There would be times where all she saw for an hour were a few minutes of dates far into the future where she held no reference to. Others, she would see nothing but the activation of spell and it would be the only vision she sees for months. Even then, she could rarely tell when in the future it was supposed to happen until she arrived to the foretold event. The Oracles did and do what she could not in a thousand lifetimes do. They could write the future.

"I can't see anything."

"But is it dark? Bright?"

"Neither, its like the open one is the only eye I have."

"Exactly, but now apply it to both eyes, and you would then know what I mean of blindness."

"What are you talking about?" Archus had enough strange talk and discussion about mysteries.

"I and my sisters cannot see beyond ourselves anymore."

"Why is that?" asked Aath.

"I wish I could tell you, but none us know why. I fear the worst."

"And what would be the worst?" Aegon couldn't begin to imagine what this meant for the kingdom.

"The worst is that we are being interfered with by a great and unknowable force."

"What would be the best?" Adun hoped that something good could be taken from this.

"That we have lost the proficiency that we held at communing with the events of the future."

"You've never called it communing before." Allyn spoke with the sort of tone that they suspected dishonesty. "You've always called it seeing, scrying, sensing, divining, having premonitions, foreknowledge, or prognosticating. But never communing." The Oracle hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to say. She stuttered various syllables before she was interrupted.

"How exactly was it that you and your sisters knew what was going to happen?" This question came from the only one the Oracle didn't expect. The queen herself asked it.

"Since the end is near I have no choice but to spill the truth then."

"What truth?"

"We never could see. Anything. No event that we've foretold had been our doing. The Oracles before had not done anything either."

"Then how did you know the truth?"

"It was fed to us."

"By whom?"

"We do not know who, but it was an elderly voice. It gave no hint if it was man or woman. All that it asked was what we wanted to know and it would tell us what we desired. The knowledge would come to us in waves of euphoria, torment, horror, bliss and more. We would surrender our bodies to the message, craving the sensation of learning. But the voice hadn't asked of us in months, and it still hasn't. The only thing it has said is that these young heroes to be must do as this man on the floor had asked."

"So, it's been a lie all this time?" Aegon couldn't believe what he was hearing. At least, he didn't want to.

"To an extent, yes. But the knowledge granted to us had always been outcomes, never requests like the most recent message. I fear the worst as I have said. A great and unknowable force may be at play, and these Prodigies may be what saves us from it."