The door sealed shut behind me. The shimmer of spells locked into place. The interior of the Oraculum glowed faintly from behind the billowing curtains that covered the walls, a breeze shifting through the room from a source unseen. I couldn't see the floor through the fog-like incense that swirled around my feet to the height of my knees. The mage stood to my left with her back to me as she mixed her serum and gold on a table filled with shallow bowls and glass flasks. In front of me was the obsidian altar, its glossy black facade contrasting its jagged, unpolished edges. The iron shackles lay open on the surface, already waiting for me. The Oracle was suspended in the air in the very heart of the open space beyond the altar, long blond hair swirling around her, pearlescent skin silvery white and shimmering, the gauzy panels of her ethereal dress shifting in the current that always snaked around her. Eyes closed, unresponsive, she was the same as always. Beautiful. Powerful. Unpredictable. Terrifying.

"Greetings, Diviner," the mage said in a distorted voice, not turning from her work.

"Greetings," I said blandly, having learned long ago that being rude to a mage garnered no benefits in the Oraculum.

"Lay down." I took a deep breath, and another. I closed my eyes. I imagined block after block of stone floating into place and building the wall higher and wider to keep Skye out of my mind. When I opened my eyes, the mage was directly in front of me. It was always unnerving how she could move so fast and without sound, but I would not let that disarming feeling show. I stared at her, and she stared back at me from behind the chain veil that fully obscured her face. The subtle movement of it with her breath was the only indication she was any more than a ghost. "Lay down, Diviner." I let out the air from my lungs and stepped around her, placing my hands on the cool volcanic glass and pulling myself onto the surface of the altar. I put my own shackles on, starting with my feet and then with my wrists, sliding the metal pins in place to keep them closed. One more deep breath and I lied down on the unforgiving surface of the obsidian slab.

"Let your sacrifice open a channel to the Oracle," the mage recited, taking my left hand and turning it so my palm faced upward, the flesh of my forearm exposed. She dipped a brush into black ink and painted a swirling line on the skin that had not yet been marked. "Let the Oracle show you what has happened, what is now, and what shall come to pass." The mage walked around the end of the altar and did the same with my right arm. She then walked back to the table, my heart kicking against my chest and the taste of bile creeping up my throat.

I swallowed and tried to slow my breathing. The mage picked up the amphora and a curved obsidian blade, a handle of gold. She turned to me. "Let your blood strengthen the Kingdom. Let your pain free Fidelium." I couldn't stop my breathing from quickening, and as the blade bit into my left arm I closed my eyes. I felt a twin pain in my right arm and opened my eyes again as the mage marked that one with the knife too. The thick, wet blood flowed in rivulets down my arms. This, I knew, was only the beginning.

The mage started chanting in the ancient language of sorcery that I didn't understand as she slowly raised the amphora above my left arm and poured the serum and liquid gold into the open wound. The pain increased a hundredfold and seared through my flesh, the gold creeping beneath my skin and slowly burning a new layer of filigree in a band across the circumference of my forearm. The mage walked around the altar, chanting continuously in her distorted whisper. She poured the liquid into the incision there, draining the amphora into my arm.

The liquid sizzled through my flesh as the gold erupted through my skin like lava through a fissure in the earth. Smoke rose from my arms and the mage's chanting grew louder. I was sure that this time my heart would break free of its bone cage. My body shook with pain and grew slick with sweat. I felt like my whole being was on fire as the mage directed the smoke from my arms toward the Oracle. As the first wisps of it touched the Oracle's face and she stirred, the mage stopped chanting. Everything was quiet except for my laboured breathing and the thrumming of my heart in my ears. I felt the crumbling of the wall in my mind and knew I couldn't keep Skye out much longer. The mage looked down at me and bent close to my ear.

"Have I ever told you that you're the only one that doesn't scream?" she whispered.

"Only every time I tithe," I gritted out. I would never give her the satisfaction of hearing me wail or beg, but the effort it took just to speak those five words started the rapid erosion of the wall in my mind.

Like a river breaking free of a dam, Skye's thoughts and feelings ruptured what remained of my defences and flooded into me, as my thoughts did to her. She felt my limbs shaking and straining against the shackles, and I felt her exploding with violence in her cage. She felt the burning in my arms as new bonds of ink and gold formed in my flesh, and I felt her snapping at the air and hissing in reptilian fury. She tasted sweat and blood on my lips and I tasted the leather and venom as she sank her fangs into the bars, testing the cage for weaknesses. I saw Kiran step toward her, the look of astonishment on his face, the helplessness in his eyes as he turned and rushed to the door and tried to pull the handle, staring at the inscriptions holding it shut as though he might be able to decipher them in time. I heard Skye yelling in my mind - Save! Save! Save! Save! - and I realized she wasn't talking to me, she was yelling at Kiran and he couldn't hear her.

The blinding luminescence of my pain and rage started to burn through the edges of my vision and I knew the connection to the Oracle was almost complete. The light drained from the room and the incessant billowing of the curtains stopped, and for a moment the fabric was suspended in time as though frozen in ice. The light behind them pulsed and a deep, reverberating sound came from every direction, descending in pitch until it reached tones too deep for me to even hear. The last of the searing gold marks burned through my arms like fuses sparking, and when the final one flared out, a blast of wind shot through the room and toward the Oracle.

The room darkened as though we were thrust into the night sky, constellations twinkling around us. The Oracle opened her eyes and looked at me with a white, pupiless stare, her arms outstretched to the sides. My head felt like it was cracking open, my throat like I'd swallowed glass. The Oracle drew from my power and took over all space in my mind, pushing me aside until I was little more than a conduit. The connection was complete. I was blind to everything else in the world but what she would show me.

Though more bearable than before, the pain still radiated through me, seeping through every vein and winding through me like worms of fire. My eyes were open, but I wasn't seeing the Oracle, or the darkened room. I couldn't hear the sound of my ragged breathing or my racing heart, nor could I smell the thick incense or the singed flesh and hair of my arms. All I could see and smell and taste was a battlefield. The Blackmoors.

I was looking down at the familiar face of a man. Captain Stelos. His eyes were open and unseeing, locked on the sky. There was a splash of blood along his cheek. A knife in his open palm. A slash across his throat. Heat still radiated from his skin. I bent and licked it, tasting salt and iron. I whined. Desperation. Despair. I looked down the length of his torso. His legs were partially submerged in the thick, oily black water. The air smelled of blood and piss, sweat and excrement. Sulfur. I heard a man cry out in the distance and looked up. He was about thirty feet away, kneeling, dressed in a black sleeveless tunic embroidered in gold and black pants. He cradled a soldier in his arms and rocked over him. He cried out again. A name: Theo. Over and over. Theo, Theo, Theo.

The man went quiet but his body shook with sobs. I heard a distant clanking sound and looked away, across the mottled battlefield of bodies on little islands in the black water. The enemy advanced toward us from the fringe of the solid ground. I focused back on the man, who didn't look up from the person he held in his arms as he gently laid the soldier down and stood. His head was bent. The man turned until he faced the advancing troops, raising his head, then standing motionless. The ash and dirt on his face were streaked with tears. I will never, he said, though there was no man left to listen. He raised his arms with his palms facing the enemy soldiers encroaching in the distance. An intricate lace shone on his arms. A whisper came on the wind and I smelled life and decay. Magic. The gold on his arms started to glow dark orange, and he looked down at the design with an expression of pained surprise. The orange became yellow, and then an intense white. The man laughed and refocused on the line of soldiers ahead. Until the pyre, he said, and then he released a thick stream of fire across the moors to the enemy line. He sprayed the army with flame. The oily water burst into fireballs around us. I started to run away. When I stopped to look back, the army was incinerating. Soldiers ran until they fell. They contorted in anguish. They all screamed. All except the Diviner of Fire, who hunched over the fallen soldier and burned until they both became one, a single soul, aflame.

Next, I saw hills and rocky outcrops from high above. I circled effortlessly on thermals, gliding over the expansive army of our enemy, the Kingdom of Viceron, as they advanced eastward. Their black armour seemed to catch and destroy light. It had no shine in the high and unforgiving sun. In the distance was a ruined castle tower. It stood several stories high, constructed of brilliant white alabaster, the east side of it missing blocks that had tumbled down the hill it stood upon. The remaining west side pointed into the sky like a jagged spear. I didn't linger here as there was no death to feast upon. Not yet.

Lastly, I saw the Artaxian Mountains, and I knew this body almost as well as I knew my own. Scales against skin, an unblinking gaze. The familiar rocking gait and smell of horses from the shoulders of my own human body. The scent of rose and sandalwood. I caught cedar, too. Pine. Decaying leaves under the hooves of our horses as we walked along a mountain road. The leaves were changing colour and falling. I looked around and saw Kaylon beside us on our left. Freya and Nikolas were behind us, talking quietly, followed by some unfamiliar guards, and trailing behind them was Rolfe. Ahead of us were more guards, as well as Ansel, Kiran, and the red-haired woman from the Theatre. Ansel said something and the other two laughed, Kiran turning toward us with a warm smile lighting up his handsome face. I felt my own heart rate pick up through Skye's scales on my chest. As he turned back again, we rounded a corner in the road and a high waterfall came into view. The waterfall fell into mist and a long wooden bridge connected the sections of road bifurcated by a deep gorge cut from the mountain by the river below. The unsettling roar of water over rocks rose up through the sparse trees that clung to the jagged cliffs. The skin below my scales went hot at the sight of it, the pulse rapid, the breathing unsteady.

The one place I thought I'd never see again. The one place I never wanted to return to.

No. No, no, no, no, no.

I had to get out of this place before I got any closer. I pushed at the Oracle in my mind, but it was like she was protected by a thick, opaque film that held me back. I didn't give up. I pushed harder. The pain increased. She wanted to explore this place in the future, and I wanted to leave. A buzzing sound started to take over, and with it a high-pitched, constant squeal that felt like a knife in my brain. I couldn't break the barrier between us, but I finally heard the voice of the mage as the connection started to loosen. The pain began to recede until only a thin thread of the bond held us together. I was already talking, relaying what the Oracle had seen and deemed worthy of expression in a voice that was not under my own control.

"Diviner of Fire, the Blackmoors. The spell was cast and the bonds were burned, the army devoured in flame. A great love lost in ash. Viceron marches past the White Tower of Jacan and into the morning sun. Weapons of the Kingdom journey where hope falls on the mountain pass. The past will find the future. The strength of the Kingdom is not whole. The war is still upon you."

With that, the connection drifted away, and I was finally free of the presence of another being in my mind. The mage continued chanting and the pain ebbed away until it was a throbbing ache in my arms and head. My breathing was still ragged and my body quaked in shock. My jaw clattered no matter how hard I tried to clench my teeth. My eyes burned as though I'd been staring at the surface of the sun. I felt completely drained of everything but the thinnest sliver of my soul.

"You may leave, Diviner," the mage said after removing my shackles. I sat up slowly and glanced at the Oracle, back in her serene stasis as though nothing had happened. Her hair swirled. The curtains billowed. The incense coated the floor. I don't deserve this, I thought, forlorn. I had no energy left to fight.

I rose unsteadily and shuffled my way to the door. I held my head up, even though it felt like a sack of stone. My stomach churned and the room spun. It took all my strength to move one leg at a time. I knew how many strides I had until the door; I'd counted them many times. Only ten more. Only nine. Only eight. Finally I made it to one and I reached out with a shaking hand, curling my fingers around the iron handle. The spell sensed my presence and the door unsealed. I pushed and the incense swept out in curling fingers as I passed the threshold, as though the Oraculum didn't want to let me go. Kiran was there on the other side and he reached for me, but I threw out my palm in a wordless request for him to stay back. I needed to stand unaided for as long as I could manage until the door closed behind me. I would not let the mage see anything less than me on my feet with my back straight and my head held high until I heard the door seal again.

The second the door was closed, I ran with jerking, lurching steps as far as I could away from the building, fell on my hands and knees, and vomited on the cavern floor.

"Gods," I spat out hoarsely, pulling my hands off the obsidian and wiping them on the hem of my dress. "She has the power to cast illusions. You'd think she'd at least make the outside a little more cheerful. You survived another tithe, now look at this pretty forest. Not this disgusting, slippery cave," I said in a wavering, weak voice as I glanced around. "It's just so... so... moist." Cringing, I took a few deep breaths and looked up at Kiran, unable to read the meaning behind his expression. "Ugh, your face," I said, looking away again, crawling from the pool of vomit. "I don't know what's worse, your pity or your disgust."

"Oh, you think this is my pity face? No, this is my awed face," Kiran said. I looked up at him in undisguised surprise. He smiled, jokingly, but with both worry and sadness too.

"If that's your awed face, it needs work."

"I'm out of practice. Not many people awe me anymore." We stared at each other a moment, and Kiran knelt down to meet my eyes. The tense smile drained away and concern overtook his expression, wrinkling his brows as his eyes darted between mine. I knew how terrible they looked. They would be bloodshot for the next two days at least, not a speck of white visible against the violet irises. "I'm sorry, Quinn," he said, laying a hand on my quaking shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

"No," I said, closing my eyes and shaking my head. "There's nothing you could have done, and you tried. I saw. It's more than anyone else has done." I bent my head, exhausted. "This is the way it is. It's been this way long before you came. It will be this way long after you leave." I glanced up and offered an understanding smile. Kiran's eyes darkened.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said quietly. I thought that he was right, he probably wasn't, but I suspected we had different reasons for believing that. He wanted to be valiant. The kingdom wanted to horde the best soldiers. Different reasons, same result. "I think someone wants to see you," he said, nodding back to the cage where Skye weaved anxiously. "Is she going to bite my face if I let her out?" I looked back over my shoulder at her and smiled weakly.

"As entertaining as that might be, I don't think so, but I make no guarantees." Kiran offered a lopsided grin before he stood and walked over to the cage, careful to not stand between us as he opened the door. Skye dropped out of the enclosure and serpentined toward me as fast as she could go. A rush of relief came from her, and the scent of roses and sandalwood that I knew she associated with me.

Safe, she said, winding herself gently around my waist. Safe.

"Yes, I'm safe. It's alright now. Thank you, Skye." I closed my eyes as her face met mine and caressed my cheek.

Sanctum, she whispered, showing me an image of my room. I heard Kiran's footfalls coming up behind us, slowing to a stop on my right. I glanced up at him where he stood with his helmet and my sleeves in his hand. His face was still etched with concern, but also curiosity as he watched Skye comfort me.

"Yes, we're going home now." Skye uncoiled from my body and drifted toward the stairway. As I started to push up from the floor, Kiran's hands gently grasped my upper arm, careful not to touch the throbbing skin of my forearms where the fresh marks glinted in the torchlight. When I was sure my legs could carry my body, I took a few slow steps, pausing whenever I felt close to either vomiting or falling. After a few stops and starts, a strong arm slipped around my waist and steadied me, taking the bulk of my weight before making some ground-covering strides toward the stairway.

"As much fun as this has been, I suggest we make some progress and get back before next week," Kiran said with a faint smile.

"I was managing on my own," I snapped, trying and failing to infuse my voice with strength.

"Yes, you were. Slowly." Amusement danced in his eyes and a dimple appeared as he looked down at my scowling face. "Incredibly slowly."

"I think I hate you."

"I think you'll love me at least a little bit when I get you back to your room in a quarter of the time it would take otherwise."

I glared up at him, assessing the pros and cons. Since we had already made it to the stairway, it was clear he had a point. "Don't you dare pick me up," I groaned.

"I wouldn't dream of it."