Vignette 1
Foreshadowing!
Terra Torus, Seventh Plate, Mount V?lva – A. F. (Annos Fractioni) 451,208:
The tranquil peace that characterised Mount V?lva’s picturesque peak was shattered. Shrieks of pain filled the temple, bouncing off limestone columns and adding to the panicked fervour of the usually sedate residents. Women of a number of races – Humans, Elves, Dwarfs, Khati, and Elementals, to name but a few – rushed around the courtyard like a flutter of panicking ghosts, their white ropes draping behind their hurried forms.
Seeing the chaos for what it was, mindless nonsense, Mother Superior Dian, who had just returned from a diplomatic mission, took it upon herself to quell the flock.
“Quite,” she pronounced clearly and loudly, but without shouting. Her voice resonated around the busy courtyard; she had chosen to stand in just the right spot for her words to reach everyone unimpeded.
In response to her command, the acolytes of the Oracle turned into statues; all recognised the spine-tingling tone of an upset Mother Superior. In the sudden silence, the wailed screams sounded all the louder. Before the group of young novices once more burst into hysteria, Mother Dian asked:
“Does anyone know where those cries are coming from?” Foreseeing the messy maelstrom of voices that was about to once more flood the space, Dian added, “Raise your hand if you know.”
More than half of the people who were about to speak promptly shut their mouths, but their hands remained down. Of those who were confident enough in their answer to raise their hands, Mother Dian pointed at a rather antsy elf. She looked to be jittering with anxiety, so the elder disciple indicated that she should be the one to speak.
“Mother Superior, it’s the Oracle!” She squeaked, and the nods of the others seemed to confirm her exclamation.
“Why isn’t anyone tending to her then?” Mother Dian asked as she began walking briskly through the field of frozen acolytes, towards the main temple.
“She ordered that she not be disturbed,” the elf said all in a rush, ducking her head in a mix of embarrassment and shame. To punctuate her words, an even greater scream than before echoed out from within the temple.
Mother Superior Dian tsked and strode right up to the great stone doors. Several of the sisters flinched when the frail old human threw the several-ton marble monstrosities open wide with no apparent effort.
The screams grew louder, and Mother Dian didn’t wait to see what her junior sisters would do before she power-walked across the receiving chamber and up the stairs. She didn’t barge through the last barrier, even with the obvious sounds of distress. Following protocol, she kneeled in front of the white silk drapes that obscured the dais and the pained Oracle from sight.
“Oracle, may I enter?” Mother Dian asked, her words swift but sure. Even in as dire a situation as this, she followed the rules.
The woman behind the curtain replied with a louder scream that may have sounded like a pretzeled donkey’s noise of affirmation. That was good enough for Mother Dian – rules couldn’t be broken, but they could be bent.
The unwavering follower pushed her way through the veil, looking up, expecting to see the Oracle webbed up in the high, vaulted ceilings. However, the giant black spider at the heart of their order wasn’t on her ordinary perch, gently checking the weave for slight vibrations that foretold the future. No, she was rolling on the ground; all that was left of her millennia-old web were burnt scraps that fluttered around the chamber like fireflies.
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“Oracle, do you need aid?” Mother Dian asked, the first edges of emotion in her wizened voice. Immediately, she summoned remedies for burns and bandages from her Inventory, but when she neared the eight-legged giant who was busy turning what had been a life-sized statue of her into rubble, Dian noticed the Lady’s fur still held its usual black sheen, the joints glowed a healthy purple, and she could see no signs of injury.
Stopping a safe distance from the unusually uncomposed Lady, Mother Dain called out over the never-ending screams, “Oracle, show me where you have been injured.”
The human-shaped torso whipped around, pulling itself out of the rubble to face the concerned Mother. Dark purple hair trailed behind the swiftly spinning finger, framing tear-stained checks as black as midnight. Eyes as white as the moons stared out blindly; however, despite their lack of sight, the seer’s orbs latched immediately onto Dian.
“Me, injured?” the Oracle laughed in her ever-youthful voice, mania creeping in round the edges. “In all my years, I have never once been injured – there is not so much as a single splinter that I can’t foresee and avoid.” She continued to laugh as she spoke, as if her words were the funniest joke she’d ever been told and not the immutable truth Mother Dian knew them to be.
“Then—” the Mother Superior began but was immediately cut off by a suddenly serious spider Lady.
“Why was I screaming? WHY?!” She roared with such force the mountain began to tremble. Mother Dian stood unmoved, waiting for the Oracle to foresee her next question.
“You’re right,” the oracular arachnid considered, deflating as she was mollified by whatever Mother Dian hadn’t actually said yet. While the leader of their order took a moment to breathe and calm down, Dian said something with actual words while she could.
“You’re not injured,” she stated, returning her healing supplies to her Inventory, “but you were attacked. The web had been destroyed. Tell me who did it, and I shall make them pay,” Dian declared with zeal.
“No,” the Oracle shrieked with sudden fear. She pulled her subordinate into an uncomfortable, twelve-limbed hug. “Please, promise me you won’t go.”
Mother Dian relaxed slightly once she was let go. She let some of her anger go; if the Oracle was being so insistent, then nothing good could come from chasing down this attacker, although it left a sour taste in her mouth.
“I suppose it’s not too great a loss. The web may be destroyed, but not the plans they represented.” Mother Dian reasoned, though the words sounded hollow – the web had been how the Oracle had tracked all her visions, and it was a major part of how their faction kept from being destroyed.
The Oracle erupted in laughter once more, her clearly exhausted muscles spasming with the effort.
“An attack? You think this was an attack?!” she questioned, tears once more rolling freely. “This was no attack. This was the future made manifest.”
“Lady Oracle, get a hold of yourself,” Dian demanded, worried her leader had lost her mind.
The spider-lady the size of a small house took a moment to let the racking chuckles pass before speaking.
“My visions shape the web: if a new king will rise to power, a new node is added; if a country will fall, an area may wilt,” she explains.
Mother Dian straightened as she realised what this meant. Falling back on ceremony, she said:
“Great Oracle, seer of futures, weaver of fate, I beseech you: tell me what you have seen. What future burns the web to ash?”
“Destruction!
I see, a shape unmeant for mortal sight—
A storm of claws and wings in writhing rise;
Its hundred eyes break through the shuddering night,
Each gleam a doom reflected in the skies.
Its breath, a whisper wrought of ash and flame,
Unthreads the fragile seams of earth and air;
The mountains bend and tremble at its name,
And oceans flee its shadow in despair.
Yet in its gait there moves a tragic grace,
Though the world itself conceived its end;
A herald born from time’s forgotten place,
Where light and darkness quietly contend.
If this be fate, then let the heavens fall—
For in its gaze, I see the death of all.”
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