“Jos?” Ryland asked, his voice shaking as he stared at the girl who looked like she belonged in a horror movie.
“Ilyan,” Joclyn spoke to me as if no one else was in the room, no one else had spoken. “We must go … before it is too late.”
“Go where?” I could barely get the words out. “Joclyn?”
“Ilyan,” she said again, her voice bleeding into a deep panic as the black faded from her eyes, leaving me staring at the beautiful silver. “Ovailia is here. We need to stop her. We need to stop them both.”
She had barely spoke before the cathedral erupted in screams, before the pained shouts of hundreds of dying people seeped through the walls and into me.
“Get them away from the door,” she whispered, and then she was gone, vanished into the air with the tiniest of pops. The sound ricocheted in my ears as Dramin and Ryland looked at me, their faces full of the same awe and confusion I felt.
I didn’t know what else to do. I jumped from the bed, following the pulse of her magic, following the screams, and hoping now was not the end I had seen.
That now was not when I would die.
I still had a purpose, after all.
I lay, enfolded in Ilyan’s arms, facing the same vision of myself that had stood with me in the sight I had been unable to escape.
The haunted apparition stood between where Ryland paced and Dramin sat, blood dripping over her face, hands covered with ash. Her body was unseen to any of them, their reality untouched by my sights.
I didn’t dare move as I watched her, the space around me shifting in and out of sight as it had since Wyn had run away from me. Images of the future, of Edmund laughing, rippled through my mind before they were gone, leaving me staring at my own blood-drenched face.
“It is almost over,” the woman said as Ryland paced through the room, his temper increasing with each step he took.
“I know,” I whispered, the weakness that had overtaken my body making it difficult to talk too loudly. “I have seen it before.”
“Are you going to fight?” the woman asked, cocking her head to the side a bit, as if she was a curious dog surveying a snack.
Shaking my head, another sight washed over me, this one of Wyn and Ovailia standing together near the main gate of the cathedral.
My heart stopped at the sight of them there, at the sight of them together, Wyn’s attack of moments ago still fresh and painful in my mind.
Even though she had attacked me, even though she had run, I knew it wasn’t her, not really. Stubbornly, I refused to accept what Wyn had done, that she could be working for Edmund. It couldn’t be. Yet, the two women stood together in my sight, Wyn jerking and twitching as she had before she had attacked me.
Before I saw any more, the glimpse of sight left, leaving my chest heaving with exertion, my eyes focused on the woman before me again.
“I have been fighting,” I snapped at her, continuing the conversation as though the infectious sights hadn’t pulled me away. “I’m going to keep fighting.”
“This is why we are who we are.”
I looked at her as she spoke, my frustrations leveling out at the deep lull to her voice.
Ryland ran across the room to where Dramin was, his motions panicked as he yelled toward Ilyan and me, but I barely saw. I felt my magic as it accelerated, pulling me deep inside of it, drowning me in it.
“And who are we?”
“We are Drak.” The woman’s voice was deep and hollow again, her black eyes focused somewhere far beyond me. “We are power.”
Her words faded as I was pulled back into a world that shifted and spun around me as a carrousel of images enveloped me, blocking the room and the woman from view and trapping me in a disturbing, shifting array.
Attempting to focus my magic, to harness my sight before I got lost in it, I only grew weaker, the pain in my head growing stronger.
“Now you must fight.” The woman’s voice broke through the images, broke through the pain in a confusing rumble I didn’t quite understand.
No matter how hard I fought the magic, fought the sight, it was no use. I was trapped in it, trapped in the powerful torrent that flashed and shifted, the images broken up with the familiar static that had haunted me so over the past few months. I wanted to scream as the ominous sounds controlled me. But no shout came. I was trapped in the tornado of sounds and sights, my soul sagging and breaking under the weight.
“Now we must fight.” The voice came again, deep and powerful.
As she spoke, a magic I had never felt before moved into me, moved alongside my own. The weakness that had incapacitated me seeped away, dripping from my body as though I was nothing more than an over-wrung towel.
“Fight it!” The shout was loud in my head as the sights that bombarded me slowed, as the static began to fade. The grating sound of the buzz was replaced by the shouts of a voice I knew all too well, one that seized me, my anger and agitation flaring violently.