“Yes.” The laugh dripped off her voice. “This is where sights live, where they are created. This is a sight before it is seen, when it is full of possibilities and futures. This is the very base of Drak magic. This is where everything begins and ends.”
“But there is nothing here,” I gasped, knowing how ridiculous it sounded. I knew magic better than any. But this … This did not feel like magic. I felt no power. I felt no strength. It was only the empty space of my mind.
“Yes. Would you like to see your beginning or ending?”
I didn’t even have a chance to respond before her laugh rebounded, the sound loud and haunting. The white void I was trapped in shifted and spun as I watched, my mind aching with the change, with the force and power of the magic I was being subjected to.
With wide eyes, I watched the white meld into vibrant colors and shapes. My heart tensed at what I was about to see before the image landed on a room I knew all too well.
My parents’ bedroom.
“Your beginning first, I think,” the child’s voice whispered, her voice mellow as the mysterious magic within me spread. The light, joyful nature of it seeped away my fear as I looked in on a room I had been in thousands of times before.
It was my own space within Imdalind now, but it hadn’t looked like this for centuries. The wide bed took up much of the massive room, ancient furnishings cluttering the space. It was in this room that I had held Ovailia for the first time—her, a tiny infant; me, an adult.
Shocked, I looked as my mother lay in that same bed. Her blonde hair was wound in a long braid, the golden ribbon woven through the intricate weave. The length flowed over the bed, wrapped with my father’s, the délka vedení královsk intertwined. Just as they did with Joclyn and me, I realized with a start.
My father sat nestled against my mother, his dark hair longer, his face softer, his eyes smiling. I didn’t think I had ever seen so much joy in his eyes. I didn’t think I had ever seen my mother so happy as I did right then, as they sat in that bed, holding an infant in their arms.
I watched the scene before me, watched the father of my childhood memories. I had almost forgotten that smile, forgotten the way his eyes lit up when he smiled. I had forgotten how he used to love, that he used to know how.
“Give him the stone, darling,” my mother whispered.
Father smiled at her before he kissed her, the longing apparent as she laughed, before pulling away with the same joy in his eyes.
Smiling, he placed a small, white stone against the hand of the child. The tiny, white bead turned a violent shade of blue the second it made contact with my skin.
My parents looked at the transition in awe. Mother gasped before she laughed while Father’s smile expanded in awe.
The tiny birthstones usually took time to change, took time to connect with the infantile magic, time to pull it to that one spot. This time, it was instantaneous.
“You began there,” the voice came again as the image of my parents faded back to the void.
My head spun with the strength of Joclyn’s magic, the force of it like a confirmation.
“So this is what she is? It’s amazing. She’s amazing.” Awe dripped from me at the remarkable reality I was facing, the void seeming to be more than the empty nothing I had taken it to be. “How am I seeing this?”
“You hold the water in your body, more than any other who does not bear my blood. You have been burned for the one who speaks to your soul, for the one who came to change it all. You have survived its pain and bonded yourself to the one the mud has chosen to guide my kind. You are powerful, Ilyan Krul. I will allow you to see.” The childlike quality of the voice had deepened. The laugh that lived behind the words shifted to a darkness that wound through me, becoming an aged wisdom it hadn’t portrayed before.
I spun on the spot, searching again for the owner. Still, there was nothing.
“So I am Drak now?” I questioned, the words feeling heavy and impossible. My mind still moved over what I was surrounded by in a wave, a desperation to understand gripping me.
“I have shown you your beginning, but it is no more than part of the story, you know. So much of what you have seen has been broken by one who should not be among us. You wish to see sight? You wish to know? I will show you what is true. I will show you what you should have seen. It all ends before it begins.”
The deep rumble of her voice intensified as the magic did, melding with Joclyn’s so perfectly they seemed to be one. My magic pulled at me as if they were.
“Joclyn?” I asked the space, my voice hollow as her magic responded, as the voice continued to meld into one I knew all too well. One I loved.
“This is sight.”
I turned at Joclyn’s voice, expecting to see her behind me, panicked of what I would face and unprepared for what came, instead.
For what I was plunged into.