The ball of white flames struck the manor with a stupendous BOOM, and its windows and walls shattered. Hot wind pushed against Alden, the force so great that he was sent flying into the air, only to be deposited roughly into one of the manor’s many gardens. The heat was no less intense there; in moments the plants were ablaze. In a panic Alden waved his hand, willing water from it that rained uselessly against the raging fire. He calmed himself, focused, and the rain became a downpour.

Extinguishing the fire around him, Alden took stock of the situation. On the left side his skin had peeled away in places, the flesh underneath appearing bright pink or red and stinging in the open air. On the right was a more gruesome sight: his flesh had been charred a dark red, almost black in places, and he could see the blackened bone beneath. That he felt more pain on the left than the right troubled him.

More troubling still was that he heard nothing. The world was as silent as a calm night despite the white hot inferno overtaking the manor, and his ears felt as if thin blades had been stabbed into them. He put a finger to his ear, pulled it back: blood.

As he healed himself he saw a thousand colorful tendrils appear and disappear. Most were as thin as a spider’s silk, barely noticeable in the first place and gone a moment after he did. Others were as thick as string, crisscrossing and weaving together like a bundle of tangled yarn, each of them leading towards the burning manor. Slowly, the strings caught aflame and disappeared.

Body healed, Alden downed a vial of mana potion, waited, then conjured powerful spouts of water from his hands. The water struck the fire at full force, creating huge towers of white steam that rose into the air above. Yet one by one the colorful strings he saw disappeared. Despite the water, the flames did not dissipate. Instead it grew and grew, until half the manor was aflame.

Ceasing his magic, Alden ran towards the manor, cast a bolt of magic that shattered one of the larger windows, then, legs straining, leapt up toward the third floor.

He had put too much strength into the leap and, though he had aimed his body well enough, crashed against the ceiling with a dull thud. He landed flat on the floor, the red-and-black carpet doing little to dampen his fall. Small chunks of ceiling fell atop him, adding to the disgrace of the situation. Shaking it off, he stood and realized, not for the first time, that he had made himself too tall. The manor’s halls stood perhaps nine feet tall. Nine, when Alden had made himself somewhere between ten and eleven feet tall. It was hard to tell.

Ducking as low as was comfortable, Alden moved through the hallway. Already the hallways were filled with smoke that stung the eyes and burned his lungs, forcing him to hold the fabric of his shirt to his mouth.

A thousand colorful strings danced before him in the smoke, yet he cared only for the thickest among them, a rope of purple around which hovered thin strings of every other color. He did not have to guess where it would lead him.

He climbed the stairways, which seemed narrow compared to his considerable figure, with some difficulty. The steps were twice as long as any normal man’s foot, yet his heels dangled off the ends with every step, and with each footfall the stairs would creak and groan beneath his weight, seemingly ready to collapse from under him. But they held, and he climbed them as fast as his size would allow.

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At every new floor he was met with servants, men-at-arms, knights, and more besides, all of them racing down the halls to escape the encroaching fire and freezing once they saw his visage. The servants merely cowered in fear until he passed, as did most of the men-at-arms. One brave man-at-arms attempted to stop him, as well as two knights after that, only for Alden to render them unconscious with magic and continue his ascent.

As he rounded the final corner of the stairs to the utmost floor, Alden paused at the sight before him. Smoke blackened the air such that it was almost impossible to see, and what could be seen most clearly were the flames. White, eerie flames that filled the corridor and ate away at the manor’s interior and filled the air with the smell of ash and, concerningly, the smell of burned meat.

Alden’s stomach twisted and churned at the smell, worsening as he traversed the corridor. Eventually he came upon a set of white painted doors inlaid with two golden lions. No sooner had he grasped one of the metal door handles had he pulled his hand away from the pain, the skin blistering almost instantly.

Using his other hand he smashed the wooden doors open, revealing a room that would have been beautiful to behold if not for the fire that encompassed it. Intricate in the extreme, the room was a box of marble decorated with a multitude of religious symbols in every sort of material imaginable from wood to glass to bone, as well as silver, steel, gold, and even several metals Alden did not recognize, each of them shaped into one of eight symbols, though half of them had already been ignited.

Only one fixture bore a different symbol. Placed at the center of the room was a sculpture that stretched from floor to ceiling and just as wide. Where the other symbols bore but one material, the sculpture in the middle bore them all, each intermixed with the others to form a vaguely circular shape that, despite the materials it was made of, seemed almost like a cloud.

And before it was the Oracle.

The Oracle was unlike anything Alden had expected. A twisted form, yet undeniably human in nature, the Oracle’s presence instilled in him a sudden revulsion that turned over and over again in his stomach. Revulsion, and surprise. The Oracle was not a single individual, but two. Twins, conjoined together since birth, and malformed. Two heads extended from a torso that was at once too short and too wide. The right head was bald and missing eyes, ears, and nose entirely, leaving nothing more than a small mouth smeared by a patch of drool around the lips. The other head was little better, having half a head of long, thin hair as black as night with small, beady eyes to match.

They wore a tunic of fine white silk that appeared bright in the daylight that poured through the windows on the far side of the room, so loose that it did little to hide the pale flesh of their chest. Even brighter than the tunic was the golden amulet that dangled from their necks, so large that it covered their chest from end to end and, beneath which, lay a single deflated breast on the left side, visible only as the Oracle shifted to look at him.

“Alden,” the left head said in a soft, feminine voice, almost childlike, yet tarnished by an almost sickly scratchiness.

“We have little time,” Alden said as sweat poured down his face and back. The room was becoming increasingly hot and, outside the window, muffled screaming could be heard.

“We have time enough,” the right head said, the voice deeper than the left’s. A boy’s. The twins were, somehow, fraternal. Alden did not have the time to question it.

“We must go. Now,” he demanded once more

Both sides shook their heads.

“No,” the left said.

“We have answers,” the right said.

“Answers we will only give now,” the left said.

“Our time is here, and no further can we go.” The right.

Breathing deep, Alden rushed forward, grasped the Oracle between his arms, and leapt out the window.