James Davis - Bloodwalk

"Hush!" Sameska's voice startled everyone in the sanctuary, echoing in the silence as all paid wary attention to the broken woman.

Her head was cocked to one side, listening for something, her eyes closed against the light of the chamber's runes. A few of the priestesses edged closer to Sameska, concerned and frightened by her behavior. They listened with her. Moments passed and they heard nothing. Shaking their heads, they whispered prayers for the high oracle's broken mind. A slight gasp from the semicircle of oracles startled them again. Nerves were stretched taut as the evening wore on. Those present followed the oracle's stare to the far wall. Several lines of runes had faded, and some had winked out altogether. "It is coming. She is closer now," the high oracle muttered. Patches of the arcane architecture died before their eyes, dismantled and dispelled by unseen hands. An encroaching darkness crawled through the chamber little by little, leaving only a single light within the half-circle.

The altar, the rune circle, and the dais of the high oracle became islands of misty light stranded in the dark. "She is here to fulfill the words of Savras, girls. To drown us along with the forest in her wake." "Be quiet!" a young woman on her right said. Shaking, she searched the blackness outside the circle for movement. She held a dagger, the traditional weapon of Savrathans, close to her breast.

Sameska scowled and clenched her own hidden blade. "Heed what she says, child," Morgynn said as she stepped into the boundary of the circle's glow. "There is a certain wisdom in madness that should not be dismissed so readily." The oracles looked in horror upon the sorceress, her face like a portrait painted in blood on an ivory slate. Blood dripped from her fingertips, covering her arms up to her elbows. She noticed the oracles' attention to the mess dripping from her hands and held them forward, palms up. "Fear not," she said mockingly, "it's not mine."

Quinsareth sheathed Bedlam and ran, avoiding the clash of forces in the streets and making his way toward the temple. He jumped off the wall before the gnolls spotted him. He had no time to relive his battle in Targris, and he struggled to keep Logfell from his thoughts as suffering wails and keening moans erupted from the undead, only blocks behind him. He focused on the rain, imagining himself weaving between the drops. He dashed between buildings like the lightning, becoming part of the storm and not the battle. The battle itself was beyond him now, beyond the works of a single warrior, and would play itself out as such. "Their fates must be their own," he whispered under his breath. He slipped between darkened, undisturbed homes and past the smoldering, steaming remains of others. Inside himself, he could feel the lie even if he couldn't admit it, but it was familiar and necessary to his task. It was a half-truth he maintained to keep moving, to stay focused. Nobility, he thought, forges more martyrs than it does victories. The malebranche passed overhead, intent on destruction and reveling in their play. Their nearness called to his blood. He buried deep his instinct for battle and wars fought long before the elven nations were born. He'd felt the same call in the High Forest near Hellgate Keep, the forests of Cormanthor near Myth Drannor, and in the snows and tundra of Narfell. This, too, he buried, though he absorbed that primal bloodlust for his own use, bending his celestial nature to his own ends and means. Seeing his objective ahead, he entered the last stretch of flooded street and crouched behind an overturned merchant's chart, its single wheel turning lazily in the wind over loaves of sodden bread. The wide square before the Temple of the Hidden Circle was paved in cobblestones laid in concentric circles, their pattern highlighted by rivers of water that flowed between the cracks and reflected the lightning flashes. He needed no lightning to see the five figures standing in a line across the center of those circles of stones. All save one wore hunters' armor and weapons. They did not move or blink; no puffs of breath steamed from their open mouths. Their bodies rippled and shimmered like mirages. What wounds they bore had ceased bleeding, open and empty. Narrowing his eyes, Quinsareth strode from his hiding place, in full view and no longer concerned with stealth. The glazed and lifeless eyes of the sentries had found him with preternatural senses that reached beyond darkness, rain, and man-made obstacles. The very fact that he lived had given him away.

"This is foolishness, High Oracle. You know that, don't you?"

Morgynn asked while observing the translucent veil of force separating her from the oracles. "This barrier will not hold forever against me.

Meanwhile, your people are dying as we speak." Sameska did not answer.

The other oracles stood ready to act, though Morgynn felt none of them were a match for her magic. Those who sat in the semicircle concentrated on their barrier all the harder. Though their minds focused on the magic, she could sense their fear. Something was hidden in that rhythm beneath their breasts, some secret they held from her.

Curious, she raised her hands to test their barrier. Weaving her spell, she sent waves of light against the translucent veil of magic.

Screaming as she pushed herself harder, she fought the combined wills of the oracles and the old magic they wielded. She stumbled backward as her spell failed and the light faded. Breathing heavily, she glared at her hands as if betrayed. She slowed her pulse and stretched her neck. Her muscles spasmed as she collected herself. "I can feel each of you," she said quietly, her words amplified in the chamber. "You're hiding something from me." Sameska looked up then, peering at Morgynn over her shoulder, trembling. "Idiots!" Sameska hissed at them, but they ignored her still. Morgynn raised an eyebrow at her outburst and cast another spell, calling forth a sphere of mist above her palm which she hurled at the barrier. It burst in a puff of smoke and tendrils of shadow spread across the invisible wall like a web, probing at the magic. Morgynn touched the shadows with her fingertips, shutting her eyes and listening to the spell as it sang in her blood, feeding her what she wanted to know. "Calm yourself, dear Sameska," she said as the shadowy web melted away, slowly retracing its course back to her outstretched hand. "I once knew an old woman, many years ago, whose faith had outgrown her humanity. In the end, she lost both." She smiled grimly at the memory of her mother, disgusted by the similarities she saw in the high oracle. The shadows ceased their movements and froze at her will as she sensed something unexpected.

The oracles' heartbeats pounded in her mind, a cadence within the harmonies of the Weave that flowed through her, but another rhythm pulsed there as well. A multitude of hearts seemed to thunder together, dispersed and hidden. She dismissed the shadows and opened her eyes knowingly, realizing the true source of their fear and sickening righteousness. Demurely, she approached the centermost oracle and knelt down to speak to her eye to eye, only the shimmering veil of magic between them. "They're hiding here, aren't they?" she said, seeking some reaction in the young woman's solemn expression.

"Those too old or too weak to fight. You're protecting them, hiding them somewhere in this place while you sit here and wonder if you've made the right decision. Defying prophecy, betraying the faith of your high oracle, and gambling with the lives of your people." The oracle remained outwardly stoic, but Morgynn could feel her quickened pulse.

She knew that if she had learned any lesson from her mother, it was that faith did not exist without doubt. Morgynn noted that Sameska watched the exchange with rapt attention. "It is a thin line you walk," Morgynn continued, "between honor and oblivion. I have seen the Abyss where doomed souls go. I know the fate that awaits you there."