Once the nothingness dissipated, I was left standing in front of a passage stone. I recognized the smooth black surface and the runes carved into it. I looked around and saw the ocean, a deep blue with foaming waves that crashed against the rocky shore. A city made of gray stone unraveled at my feet, complete with a large harbor riddled with small ships, their sails fluttering in the wind.
A female Druid stood next to me, waiting in front of the stone as it began to ripple. I recognized the dozens of tattooed rings on her bare arms. Her long hair was the color of wet sand, and her eyes were a familiar shade of hazel green. She wore a dark brown sleeveless robe, tied around her waist with thin golden strings. A sword hung at her side in its gold-plated scabbard.
The ten young Druids I’d seen in my previous visions walked out of the stone, holding each other’s hands. Obscured by black hoods, they walked onto the grass, along with their flying horses.
Some of them had been crying, judging by their red eyes. They looked like they hadn’t slept in a long time. The female Druid smiled gently as she hugged each of the scholars.
“You are all welcome here, young souls,” she said. “Genevieve may be gone now, but her kingdom is strong, and there are many of us still fighting against Azazel. You are safer here than in the Grand Temple.”
“The Grand Temple is no more,” one of the young Druids said. “Our elders are dead, Jasmine.”
I realized where I’d seen her features before. She was Almus’ sister, the one tasked with protecting the young Druids once they reached this planet. She sighed, tears glazing her eyes, and forced herself to smile reassuringly.
“No matter what happens, the Druids will live on. Our traditions will live on through you, even if the rest of us die,” she said.
“Where are we going?” another young Druid asked, looking out at the ships in the harbor.
“There’s a ship waiting for us below. It will take us to the Sand Dunes, away from this continent. No one dares venture there. It’s deserted and impossibly hot, even for snakes,” she replied. “We sail within the hour.”
“Will we really be safe there?”
“You’ll be hidden from the rest of the world. No one knows you’ll be there, not even my brother. You can stay there and hone your skills until you are powerful enough to rise against Azazel.”
They looked at each other, occasionally glancing back at the ships.
“Will you stay with us there?” one of them asked.
“I can’t, although I wish I could. I am needed here to preserve the archives and ensure our entire trove of spells and wisdom are hidden from Azazel. I will come see you all once every full moon, though,” Jasmine replied.
I didn’t get to hear much else, as I faded out into my next vision. I had a feeling I would see the young Druids again.
Smooth, red sand beneath a clear blue sky surrounded me. Powdery-looking dunes stretching deep into the horizon. The wind was high and strong, rising wisps of sand in weightless swirls.
I didn’t understand what was there for me as far as the vision was concerned. I spent a few minutes in limbo, wondering what I was doing there until I heard a metallic clank. I looked down and saw a hatch open, pushing the sand aside.
One by one, the young Druids popped their heads out from the complete darkness below. That must’ve been their hiding spot. I could tell several years had gone by. They all looked a little more mature than I’d last seen them, their skin tanned and hair longer. They were naked as they came to the surface, digging their hands into the hot sand.
“Do you think she’s dead?” one of them asked the others.
“Jasmine? Maybe,” responded another. “It doesn’t mean we should stop checking the shores. She might come, still.”
“She hasn’t been at our meeting spot in months, Thadeus,” a third one said.
“We don’t stop looking!” Thadeus replied sharply. “Every full moon, we go there and we check. We promised.”
The boy scoffed then morphed into a massive black cobra, slithering across the dunes as he headed west. The others shifted as well and followed him as they reveled in the heat and sought to reach the western shores.
I realized that they’d been holed up in that place for a long time, seeing Jasmine once a month for updates and news from the mainland. She hadn’t been there in a few months, though, leading me to believe that something must have happened.
If I was to follow the historical timeline and the fact that Jasmine was never seen or heard from again, I concluded that the young Druids had been left on their own, hidden from the rest of the world in a land that was far too dry and deadly even for Destroyers.
My third vision brought me to the top of a black cliff poking out of the same red sands. The sun was setting in the west in shades of fuchsia and scarlet. The stars began to shimmer on the other side, accompanied by a round pearly moon.
A funeral pyre burned before me, charcoal smoke billowing upwards in thick rolls as the fire consumed the body of one of the young Druids.
Only six of them were left. Their eyes were small and swollen, probably from crying. They were quiet and grieving, and I could almost sense their loss of hope.
Thadeus was no longer amongst the six remaining Druids. They wore their black hoods, revealing a dozen tattoo rings on each arm. They wiped more tears away, as some of them hummed, their gazes fixed on the burning body.
“Jasmine is surely dead,” one of them said. “It’s been years now.”
“Twenty-seven, to be precise,” responded another.
“You still keep track, Ori?” another asked, and Ori nodded slowly.
A moment passed before anyone spoke.
“What do we do now?” a soft voice asked.
“We don’t go to the western shore again. The Destroyers are there,” the first Druid replied. “We should’ve stopped going there years ago when they first captured Thadeus. They’ve gotten vicious. They didn’t even bother to take Glennar. Or Cayron last year. The bastards just killed them.”
I assumed that Glennar was the one being given the funeral that evening. I couldn’t help but grieve with them, my heart breaking for everything they’d gone through. They were isolated in this desert, but if they ventured toward the main continent, they would be hunted down and killed, or worse, turned into Destroyers.
They reminded me of Draven with their remote upbringing, but he’d had it worse than they had. He’d had no one other than his father and Elissa to keep him company, and even they were gone in the end, leaving him on his own.
“So, we stay here. We try the eastern shore. We keep practicing until we have full control of the sixtieth level. Then we move on to sixty-one,” Ori said. “We can’t stop. Azazel will swallow this world whole if we don’t stop him.”
“We’re never going to be strong enough to face him,” said Cassin.
“Yes, we will, Cassin,” Ori replied firmly. “We have no other choice. We keep going, or we wait here patiently to die. Our elders did not sacrifice themselves for us to wither away and perish in the red desert. Neither did Jasmine. We have to keep going.”
“I wonder what became of Thadeus and Damion,” Dain added, looking out to the west, squinting his eyes against the setting sun.
“They’re either dead or Destroyers by now,” Ori said. “Either way, they’re lost. Forget they exist. We must look out for each other.”
I was impressed by their resilience and resolve. It gave me enough hope to think that they could still be alive in the present. They seemed strong enough to survive the harsh desert conditions, and they’d learned to stay away from the western shore.
I looked down and noticed a sinuous river flowing from north to south, the stream passing beneath the black rock. Its banks were green and sprinkled with colorful flowers, and the water was crystal clear, flowing over billions of grey and black pebbles.
I realized I had enough information to get an idea of where the young Druids were resettled. It was the continent beyond Stone
wall, from what I could tell, a land of red deserts. There was a river flowing somewhere, and they’d often visited the western shore.
I tried to get a better look at the area and noticed a recurring pattern of black rocks coming out of the sand. Some were rounded down by the passage of time and the wind, while others had just been revealed, judging by their sharp edges. I noticed traces of sculpted floral motifs on a piece that resembled a column.
This used to be a settlement, I thought to myself. Perhaps a city.
Whatever it had been, it wasn’t anymore. It had been swallowed by the desert many centuries ago, given the level of erosion. However, it still helped with further narrowing down the young Druids’ possible location.
As the image dissolved back to black, I felt a wave of excitement wash over me. I looked forward to rechecking the planet’s maps to see if I’d gotten enough details from my visions to find the young Druids.
I couldn’t wait to share my findings with the group. I also wondered if Aida could peek into the present and look for them. I hoped to find them alive and well somewhere in that desert, waiting for someone to reach out to them.
I had hope, and that mattered the most. With Vita captured by Azazel, my sister out there risking her life to get to Stonewall, and Jovi venturing in the northwest, hope was a welcome thing to have.
Phoenix
I gathered everyone in Draven’s study later that afternoon, including Eva, who stood quietly in a corner. I could tell she was worried about her mother, but we had enough on our plates already. Aida had her own set of visions to talk about concerning Vita, so she was the first to recount what she’d seen.
“I was trying to reach out to Vita, directly, but it didn’t work out. I wound up having visions instead,” she said, then sat in the Druid’s desk chair. “Fortunately, I didn’t bump into Azazel, so there’s that. I saw the Nevertide Oracle first and, strangely enough, she was able to speak to me directly, as Azazel had done before. I don’t know how this personal connection between Oracles works exactly since she was able to talk to me through a vision, but she told me how to contact Vita. It’s something I will have to try on my own. It’s not a precise science. She told me to tune reality out and listen to the universe until I hear Vita’s heartbeat, then focus on that until I see her clearly before me.”
“That’s a little vague,” I mused, leaning against the wooden desk. “How do we know Azazel didn’t put her up to this?”
Aida took a deep breath and shrugged.
“We don’t, but she did feel genuine to me. She said she had no idea that Azazel had found a way to detect me during my visions. I don’t know, but it’s worth a shot,” she replied. “My next vision confirmed what we already knew, but it did offer some new insight. First, the shackles on Kyana’s wrists are the only thing keeping her from turning into a snake and slithering out of Azazel’s dungeon. Second, Patrik got wounded during Vita’s abduction, and he’s making progress in breaking Azazel’s spell of control over him. He’s not there yet, but he’s trying hard. If Kyana gets out, Azazel’s leverage on Patrik will vanish. I think it’s a key strategic point to consider if we’re to engage with Patrik soon.”
“What are you thinking, specifically?” Field asked.
“I’m getting there. Let me tell you about my third vision, which is the most important. I saw Vita and she’s okay. She’s locked in a room of her own with bars on the windows. She’s been fitted with shackles like Kyana’s so she can’t use her fire fae powers. She’s sad and angry, and she probably has a splitting headache judging by the bruise on her temple. My guess is that Patrik knocked her out after she or Bijarki injured him. There’s a Destroyer looking after her, and he seems to have a soft spot for Vita.”
“How do you know that?” I cocked my head to one side, having a hard time believing that Destroyers were capable of such emotions. I considered Patrik to be an exception to the rule that they were all mindless abominations and nothing else.
“I’m a girl. We know these things,” Aida smirked. “The point is, if I manage to reach out to Vita directly, I can let her know that Bijarki is on his way to get her as soon as he gathers all the ingredients he needs for the invisibility spell. She can use this waiting time to help us from the inside. She can befriend the Destroyer and play along with Azazel’s request for cooperation. She can tell him some general or vague facts from the future, enough to keep him interested and benevolent toward her, but not enough for him to tamper with any of our plans. She can thus gain some trust and eventually make it into the dungeons, where she can break Kyana’s shackles and set her free. It will help get Patrik on our side. It’ll be enough motivation for him to either end his own life and leave Azazel without his top lieutenant, the key strategic point I was talking about, or gather enough strength to break free and regain his will power.”
We stood there in silence for a while, chewing this over. It made sense. We all agreed on this, in the end, looking at Aida.
“So, what you need to do next is channel your energy into opening that direct line with Vita,” I concluded and gave her a reassuring smile. “I have all the faith in your ability to dial-up our little fire fae.”
“Thanks, Phoenix,” she smiled back. “I think we’re finally onto something good, despite all the crap.”
“Yeah, and speaking of something good, I got to see the young Druids that escaped from the Grand Temple,” I replied. “They made it to this planet, where Jasmine, Draven’s aunt, took them to another continent, the desert land, the Sand Dunes.”
Anjani’s eyes lit up as she rummaged through the bookshelf and pulled out a large map of Calliope. She spread the old parchment over Draven’s desk, then looked at me.
“What do you remember about it? Did they make it there?” she asked.
“Yes,” I nodded. “They stayed hidden in the red desert for years. I think Jasmine was killed. She vanished and stopped coming to check in on them. And four of them were eventually lost. Two killed, and two taken by Azazel, though I’m not sure what happened to them. They were probably turned into Destroyers.”
“Where did you see them?”
Her eyes scanned the Sand Dunes marked on the map in red ink.
“They were somewhere in the middle of the desert at first. There was a hatch that led to an underground shelter, but I didn’t get to go inside. They used to turn into snakes and go to the western shore every full moon to meet with Jasmine. That’s what I saw in my second vision,” I said.
“Serpents can’t cover more than a few dozen miles in one trip, so they must have been somewhere on this fascia,” she replied, pointing out a wide strip of land on the central-west side.
“Yeah, but then I saw them burn one of their own on a funeral pyre, years later, by a river with black rocks,” I added, looking at the map and seeing the only river much further east.
“Which means they moved around,” Field concluded.
“Probably, after they realized they wouldn’t see Jasmine again. They moved deeper into the continent to put more distance between them and the Destroyers,” I replied.
The Daughter then scoffed, her gaze moving around as if she was processing some new information.
“I think I understand now,” she muttered and pulled out her notebook where she jotted down all the runes she saw on our bodies, including the ones provided by Field and Anjani from previous sessions. “They didn’t make a lot of sense in the beginning, but now I’m starting to see a pattern.”
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“Earlier when you had your visions, we woke up together and there were still runes dancing across your skin,” she replied. “I memorized them before they faded and wrote them down here. They’re usually single words repeated in different sequences. Looking back, I’ve noticed some connections. For example, all of Vita’s visions come with the word ‘sacrifice’ attached to them. Whenever Aida has a vision of Patrik, I see the word ‘bond’ a lot. Where Sverik was involved, ‘obscure’ was a c
ommon occurrence. In this case, three words are repeated. ‘Black,’ ‘rock,’ and ‘flow.’”
“Hah!” Anjani exclaimed, beaming as she pointed at the river on the map. “That’s Onyx River. It’s the only source of sweet water in the Sand Dunes. Those black rock formations aren’t typical. From what I remember, they stretched over several miles in the south, at most!”
She pointed at a specific region on the map. We then looked at each other as the realization dawned on us.
“Provided they’re still alive, we now have an approximate location of our runaway Druids,” I grinned, my index finger circling the area she’d just highlighted.
Field was the first to come to me for a high-five, our palms thundering in the impact before he took me into a bear hug. I wrestled myself out of his strong grip, laughing.
We were all bright and happy. It was a small victory, but a victory, nonetheless. It offered us five minutes of sheer satisfaction which we gladly took. The Daughter smiled as she watched my interaction with Field, then looked down at the map.
“Perhaps we should look for them in the present, too,” she said slowly, then looked at Aida.
“Okay, fine,” Aida replied, jokingly rolling her eyes. “I’ll check them out as soon as I get the chance and can hone in on them in my visions. First, I’m going to reach out to Vita. We need to get her on board and play Azazel like the fiddle he deserves to be!”
“If you need anything from us, we’re here,” Anjani gave her a warm smile, which Aida gladly returned.
With how things had been evolving between her and Jovi, it was nice to see the succubus getting along so well with his sister. After all, they were both stuck in the mansion, worrying about Jovi and the rest of our group.
It was interesting to see how our relationships had evolved over the course of several weeks, and how quickly we’d gotten close, how hard we’d fallen in love, and how determined we were to prevail and save an entire world.