A dream: You see a series of bright white lights, followed each by deep darkness, they flash back and forth and back and forth, your vision starts to clear. You are walking around the streets of a town, it is the streets of Millstone, there is a Festival in full swing. The day is mildly cloudy keeping things from getting unbearably hot. Colorful streamers of cloth hang from the windows and people walk the street in their most colorful clothes. They all seem to be in a happy mood. There is wine and ale flowing in all the stalls that line the streets. The large banquet tables fill the town square. You can hear people all over the place singing songs and shouting to one another across the open spaces. You can see Abigail across the square, she appears to standing with some of the other clergy talking gently with a drink in one hand and a plate in the other. She sees you and smiles in your direction and then waves softly. You continue on and several more people see you and wave and smile and you make your way. A little girl walks up to you wearing a yellow dress, it was obviously dyed poorly but she seems happy with it just the same. She stands right in front of you and looks up at you. “You are pretty lady. How do I get pretty eyes like you?”

Then there is a sound in the distance, a great rumbling, everyone in the square seems to look in the same direction off beyond the rooftops of the city. The clouds begin to grow much darker and develop a purple hue. There is a flash of light and what looks like red lightning begins to rumble inside the cloud. Then the ground begins to lift under your feet, under all of your feet. Then it drops again with a great shaking. An earthquake, walls of buildings begin to shift and fall. Brick and stone and wood and thatch begin to rain down all over the place. The joyous shouts and singing quickly becoming fearful screaming, and terrified yelling. Some stone begins to fall from a nearyby building and you quickly jump back and avoid any of it from landing on you. You fall down on your back as the ground continues to shake and move. The sky almost a dark crimson now, slowly being consumed by a deep black and purple clouds. The red lightning continues to pour and the ground continues to shake. You can feel it, a dark magic, building, growing steadily, you do not know what kind or what intent it has but you can sense it. A strange powerful magic, fills the air. More rubble begins to fall and you are unable to avoid it this time. It falls and as you try to scoot back your legs becomes trapped by some falling timber, that no doubt at some point was a part of someones roof. Without a second thought you bring out your power and your wings in searing white come out and you are, as quickly as you can think in the air floating above the streets. From here you can see where the dark clouds seem to touch the ground you take this time to focus and look far out into the distance, almost to the horizon, here floating above the ground you can see it , to the northeast, the forests beyond Fieldhaven. There the red lightning seems to be more violent and strike the ground and it seems to strike and worm its way in the clouds. You begin to settle back down to the ground and look around you as the shaking begins to slow. People run in every direction searching for loved ones and running for cover from the threatening clouds and lightning. People everywhere screaming and yelling from under neath rubble with arms and legs trapped beneath rubble. Your eyes search quickly across the square you do not see her, did Abigail make it to safety? You move forward and there at your feet you can see it, a tiny arm sticking out from amongst stone and timber, a small stream of red pooling on the stone at your feet. The world around seems to go quiet and there is nothing else but silence as you move. Without thinking you hold out your hands and cast healing into the mass debris. You can feel it take hold, you keep your hands up and casting. There, a twitch, the small fingers begin to twitch and grasp. Again with barely a thought you reach down and with the Divine light still pouring from you and with the wings of light still spread from your back you begin to toss stone and timber aside they crash and break as you throw them with inhuman force. You can hear the rough breathing and coughing under the weight of the stone. You see it there, small bits of yellow cloth under the stone. In another second you have her clear and you hold her in your arms, holding her you can see can that she is still injured. The bleeding has slowed and you can see the wound on her head still closing. She will survive with this but just barely so. You look around and once again the screaming reaches your ears, injured bodies all over the place. You could heal her just a bit more but that could cost someone else their life if you were to run out of power. So many injured, so many already lost. What power would have done this?

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

You wake.