Chapter Twenty-Seven

True Sight

Michael finally rose from bed early the next morning and he was surprised to find the dream hadn’t left him upon waking like so many others. Michael got dressed and made his way outside, squinting as the pale sun of Rising yawned over the fortress walls.

The mere sight of daybreak filled Michael’s heart and a moment later he spotted his group of new friends sitting some way down the pavilion. He smiled brightly until he spent too much time thinking on the word friends, and Carter and James stuck in his mind.

Nichole grinned at Michael as he sat down and pushed a steaming mug toward him. “Black coffee, right?”

The small gesture made Michael’s heart ache a touch. He tried to smile wide but his thoughts were too heavy.

Nichole’s face narrowed with gentle concern but before she could ask Michael mouthed, It’s nothing. Promise.

She seemed unconvinced but squeezed his hand fondly and made no more of it.

Before Michael had a chance to drink, Oliver raised his own mug and gripped Michael by his shoulder. “A toast.”

Everyone raised their cups and Michael frowned. “What’s this?”

“Everyone’s first jab at Arcancy is rough, but I can honestly say I’ve never seen someone handle it so well. To Michael.”

“To Michael!” they said together, leaving the archer blushing behind his mug.

Eventually they let him be and Michael said, “Okay, so I’ve got to ask roughly one thousand questions.”

“Shoot,” said Nichole, still puffy-eyed, sipping tea.

“Starfire?” he asked, simply.

Oliver nodded, chewing on a piece of toast. “Arcancy-made light.” After a moment, he realised he was speaking with his mouth open and politely covered it with his hand, half-glancing at Sarah. “We have different names for the different kinds of Blood Magic. Most of it's nonsense. They just serve to help us label it. Mine’s called a Thief’s Step. Sarah’s has been called a Titan’s Strike.”

Michael put down his cup and held out his hand. The veins in his palm began to twitch. He blinked and found himself working up a bit of a sweat.

“You’ll find Arcancy a tad more troublesome when you’re not in the heat of the moment. Your mind is slower. Your heart is less demanding. Your soul is more stubborn.”

Michael nodded understandingly. During the fight it was do or die. And now he was at a breakfast table surrounded by good company. The only thing he was fighting was a yawn. It was hardly high stakes. Despite that, eventually his tendons and veins tinged and began to glow with heat.

A bead of sweat rolled down his temple and a small pearl of light crept out from the creases in his skin, perfectly, sunflower yellow. He blinked with confusion.

“Why is it so yellow?” asked Aroha, leaning on her hands, watching close like an eager child.

Michael shrugged, but his eyes were alight with quiet wonder when Nichole said, “Flinn once told me it has something to do with your mood.”

Aroha finished her mug of coffee and leaned back somewhat sourly, though undirected at him. “Must be nice, knowing what your Arcancy is. Finally scratching that invisible itch.”

Michael let the light fade from his hand and watched the veins sink away again. “Kind of.” He wanted to say more, to agree to happily go on, but something else lingered in the corner of his mind.

It was only after straining through breakfast that Michael realised how sore his muscles were. His two firing-fingers twinged with every use of a fork and his legs ached no matter how he sat. A raw, groaning stiffness sat tight in the space between his shoulders and he spent the meal picturing himself sinking into a long hot bath.

Michael’s attention was drawn sharply away when those around him began smiling and wishing their good mornings to Sidney as she wandered up, yawning and bleary-eyed.

“Mornin’ Sid,” Sarah said with a grin and Sidney waved her off, eyes barely open.

Sidney shuffled to the coffee station, poured a very full cup and dumped in at least three spoons of sugar. “I’m with you lot today.”

The warrior wasn’t in their usual full-body armour. Instead she wore a simple white blouse and flowing pants with her hair pinned back. Every time the wind blew, the muscles of her back, thighs and arms were transparent against the material.

Aroha leaned back curiously. “Thought you were heading on a scout?”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

She blinked as if remembering why she was there and sipped her cup again. “Change of plans. You all done eating? Good. Follow me.”

The lieutenant towed the curious Legacies across the grounds until she found a clearing of space near the statue of Kyliana the Vengeful. The statue looked forlornly upon the company as they wandered in, ever-shouting in anguish at the heavens with her sword plunged deep into the soil.

Sidney turned to face everyone and said, “Jack wanted you guys to brush up on your survival skills. He’s satisfied, for the moment, with how you fight enemies, and now you’ll be training to fight everything else. Despite what you might think, starvation, thirst, and exposure will kill you as easily as any Shanii.”

Michael frowned, wondering why they’d wandered further into the fortress to do wilderness training. “When do we start?”

“As soon as you’ve woken a touch more,” she said, side-eyeing Oliver as the swordsman yawned so hard he was just shy of screaming.

Sarah began tying up her hair and said, “We’re not doing this in the garden, are we?”

“Nope.” Sidney produced a scroll which she’d been carrying under her arm.

It was faded and torn at the edges where it had been endlessly opened and closed. She unfurled it, took a deep breath and began to recite its words, stumbling slowly through the foreign tongue.

Michael listened to the strange, arcane sounds sparking off of her lips and suddenly was doused in memory.

“Do you guys ever have odd dreams?” Michael asked.

“Well, comparatively odd to some, yes,” Oliver replied, doing his best not to smile.

Michael rolled his eyes. “Alright, smart-arse, last night I was somewhere that I’ve never been. The entire thing was like it was out of a faerie tale or- no… like something my mother used to sing about when I was little.”

Aroha frowned and looked to the others who seemed just as confused. “Go on.”

Michael tried to put the memory to words. “There were these -I don’t want to call them creatures- they were too great to be just creatures. They were… I don’t know… magnificent seems underwhelming. And the dream felt old somehow. I was there, but not really, and it felt so true. I could feel it beneath my feet. I… I don’t know.” He looked at their faces again and gave up. “I sound crazy.”

Nichole blinked at the last description. “What do you mean it felt like you were there?”

Michael shook his head, unsure. “Dreams have holes in them. Missing details. This was something else. It wasn’t like I’d fallen asleep... It was like I’d woken up.”

Sarah had stopped smiling. Her face was suddenly serious and her brow formed a hard line. “The creatures. What did they sound like?”

Michael began to wonder if the dream was written on his forehead. “Why…”

“Just answer me this. If you had to imagine that the world itself had a voice, would it sound like them?”

Michael just nodded, speechless. “How did you know that?”

Sarah looked to Nichole and Aroha and the two archers seemed lost for words, but not out of puzzlement, out of awe.

Oliver blinked and couldn’t decide how serious he was supposed to be.

Sarah caught a glance of his expression and excitedly grabbed his arm. “He saw the Gargan, Oli!”

Oliver’s eyes went so wide that Michael nearly laughed despite his own confusion.

Michael rubbed his eyes and joined Oliver in his cynicism. He had been prepared to accept any answer except that. It was one dream too big. But ever since he'd run away, he’d spent a great many days just plainly bewildered. It was getting exhausting, especially when the questions and their answers just led to more questions.

“Michael.” Nichole grabbed him by the shoulders. “Have you done that before? Seen something out of time or place? Something that real?”

Michael shook his head instinctively but caught himself amidst it. “Oh. Maybe?”

Oliver cocked his head. “Maybe?”

“Back at my school. Something happened. But I was awake…” Michael remembered the feeling on that day. At the time it’d felt like nausea. Like vertigo. “But it was like I was seeing some version of the world. Some dream. Like it was forcing its way into my head before it could force its way into the world.”

Nichole let out a breath of stunned disbelief. “You’re a prophet.”

“A prophet? What, like Ionada?” Michael snorting. “I should start a cult.”

Sarah chuckled, “Not a religious sage… more like an oracle. You can see through time. You can walk between dreaming and waking.”

Michael looked at them both fondly and sighed. “Okay. Answer honestly. Should I believe you guys really know any more about my insanity than I do?”

Sarah leant toward him. She hesitated for a moment and then recited, “‘A language so beautiful that you didn’t want to understand it.’

Michael went pale. It was as though she pulled the thoughts from his skull.

Sarah knew she’d hit the mark. “That’s a quote from one of the few historical accounts on age-old relics found in connection with the Gargan creators. Tell me that you think it's normal to have dreams that peer into the deepest recesses of an age so long gone that people don’t even write faerie tales about it any longer.”

Michael closed his mouth. He wasn’t used to feeling like there was nothing to say. It left him feeling profoundly exposed.

Aroha grinned, not noticing the extent of his uncertainty. “Michael Williams, the Oracle of Dim-side.”

“You lot about finished?” Sidney asked. “This thing’s burning my goddamn hands.”

The company refocused to find Sidney standing there, looking rather miffed as the scroll in her hands sparked with multi-coloured light, shimmer and pulsing in her grasp.

Nichole looked at the scroll. “Is that magic stable?”

Sidney shrugged. “I was told we could get two more goes out of it, but not if we keep fuckin’ about.”

Everyone gathered about into a smaller circle and Sidney began a much simpler incantation. The air around them seemed to grow colder with every word spoken.

Sidney stopped chanting; her eyes still closed. “Anyone who would like not to proceed. Speak now.”

She was met with silence.

“So be it. Oh, and Michael, I’d keep the news of your new Arcancy to yourself. Amekot doesn’t need to know everything.”

Before Michael could raise a question to her point, a flash of bright white light engulfed them all, and the five warriors vanished from the courtyard, leaving Sidney lightly stunned and on her own. She looked down the ground where the group of young Legacies has stood, and in their place lay three bows, three quivers, two swords and a collection of daggers.

Sidney coughed and retched at the taste of smouldering air. Finally she squinted at the burnt, hole-filled scroll in her hand and mumbled, “Hope those words aren’t super important,” before she sipped her coffee.