Rise of the Witch Queen

Vision Quest

"I'm coming for you," Jace whispered in my ear. I held my breath, praying that this nightmare would end. Eventually, I couldn't feel Jace's warm strang hands anymore.

I tentatively opened my eyes to find the concerned Will and Luke hovering above me. "Charlotte, are you ok? What happened?" Will asked frantically.

Blinking, I tried to reorient myself. There was hard cement beneath the lower half of my body. I realized the top half of my body was being supported by Luke. His arms were wrapped around me protectively. I tried to hastily extract myself from Luke's arms, but my movements were lethargic. "I saw something insane," shaking I wrapped my arms around my knees, rocking back and forth. "Am I going insane?" I whimpered trembling.

"Did you see something?" Luke asked urgently.

"I don't know," I replied dazedly. "It can't have possibly been real, though." The last part was more of a desperate plea trying to convince myself of that.

Will looked at me in amazement, "You had your first vision, didn't you?"

Wide-eyed, I looked at him. "I don't know," I sobbed. "One minute, I was talking to you guys, and then my vision was all screwed up, and then I saw Jace, and I don't know what's happening."

"You had a vision," Will said, attempting to soothe me. "It was your first vision. The literature from the previous oracles tells us that visions aren't always literal. They could be an interpretation of future events."

Will paused clearly too upset to continue, and Luke continued in his stead. "Please just tell us what you saw."

I took a deep soothing breath and let myself take comfort in Will's attempts to soothe me. I recounted the vision focusing on Will. I left out Jace's comments towards me, though. I didn't want to invite any more trouble than I already had.

"Sounds like this Jace killed the old alpha launching a coup," Brooks said, looking at me with amazement. "If this is true, knowledge about this ahead of time is incredibly valuable."

"I'll go inform my father of this development," Luke said stiffly. It was odd how tense Luke's relationship with his father seemed to be. It seemed like Luke liked his father about as much as I did.

Groaning, I pushed myself up to my feet. My head ached, and my legs were wobbly, but I was otherwise excellent. Rolling my head, my neck cracked. "I can't believe we actually witnessed the oracle having a vision," Thatcher whispered to Blaine.

"I'm just glad we got a heads up about the change in the Were leadership. We need to make sure that Jace remembers his place," Blain whispered back.

"His place?" I asked, shocked by how callously they were talking about Jace.

"All creatures in the city are governed by warlocks, and we enforce the laws if they get broken. Every once and a while, some group decides that they don't like this arrangement, so we have to give them a... reminder," Will explained. "How are you feeling?" He asked, abruptly change the subject.

"Like I got hit by a truck," I groaned "Is it always going to be like that?"

Will smiled sadly, "With visions of the future? Yes. With practice, you should be able to control your visions of things happening at that moment or visions of things that have already happened."

"And what can you guys do?" I asked the group of boys.

"I telekinetic," Will said, "Thatcher can teleport, Blaine can manipulate emotions, Brooks control the elements, and Luke is a necromancer."