Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
“What kind of woman?” the Truthmaster asks sharply.
“She’s made of lava,” I say excitedly, and I watch as she steps out of the pool: full breasts, small waist, thin hips, long legs. Her body cools slightly in places, holding her shape while turning black, and the rest of her burns molten-hot. “She’s a woman made of lava.”
“And what else do you see?” he asks. “Is she saying anything to you?”
“Why would she be saying anything to me?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer. It doesn’t seem like I’m part of this scene with the lava lady, especially since her attention is at the back of the cave where…
“She’s not alone,” I tell them. “There’s a dragon there, I think I see a clawed foot, I…” I pause, blinking at the sight. “The dragon has two heads. It’s blue, metallic blue, and it has two heads. She’s talking to it and it’s listening to her like it…”
“Slangedrage,” Vidar whispers. “The dragon that lays the egg of immortality. This means we’re on the right track.”
I watch as she continues to say something to the dragon and then the dragon reaches down with its head and picks up something in its mouth.
A body.
I gasp again, hand to my mouth, but before I can see whose body it is, if it’s human or not, the image suddenly fades until I’m staring at a hunk of resin again.
“It’s gone,” I whisper, feeling lightheaded. “It’s gone.”
I look across at Sae Balek. “How do I make it come back?”
“You can’t,” he says calmly. “It showed you what you needed to know for now. You can come back another time and try again, as the Kolbecks do, but—”
I shake my head. “I wish I knew about this sooner. We leave for Esland tomorrow.”
“Then this is all that the goddesses decided you should see,” Sae Balek says. “Including Voldansa, the goddess that you saw. The unworshipped goddess of the Midlands.”
“That was Voldansa?” I ask.
“The very one that the people of Esland choose to ignore and put their faith in the dragons instead. It will be their biggest mistake.”
Well, that is ominous.
“What you saw is the future,” Vidar says quietly. “And I have never seen any goddess in my future. We must take this seriously. We must take this as a sign.”
“But you said the resin is a drug,” I protest, looking between the both of them. “That this is a hallucination.”
“Hallucinations aren’t real,” Sae Balek says. “Prophecy, telepathy, those are real. The drug merely opens your mind to what your higher self has already seen. What your higher self has already gone through. You are existing on a plane of reality right now, but there are other versions of yourself on other planes, and the drug opens the passage through them, like a tunnel into all timelines of your soul. Your future self is sending you something you need to examine deeply, perhaps even take heed.” He pauses, his mouth crooked as he smiles faintly. “Time is a circle, Lady Aihr. You are everywhere all at once.”
I blink, trying to take that in. Maybe I’m too stupid to understand it, but time being a circle instead of something linear is something that I just can’t accept.
“Tell Lady Aihr what you saw,” Sae Balek says to Vidar. “Tell her what you saw in the flames. Tell her you saw her…last year.”
I stare at Vidar. “Last year?”
He slowly nods. “I was having a session. I saw the Midlands, a long shoreline of lava rock and black sand. And I saw you, and your dog. And Andor. I saw the three of you running before the image faded out.”
“Did you tell Andor?” I ask, feeling incredulous. He knew about me before I even showed up?
“I didn’t,” he says carefully, in such a way that makes me wonder how many secrets the brothers keep from each other. “Andor never believes any of the resin visions at any rate. But once I had heard about you, I knew my vision had come true. And so the same will happen for you.”
“But this still doesn’t help us,” I tell him. “We aren’t even supposed to go to the Midlands tomorrow.”
“No, but we will be heading there after the heist,” Vidar points out. “That’s the whole reason we’re bringing Steiner with us. He needs to stay on the ship in the event we’re successful with stealing the fertilized dragon eggs that my father has asked for.”
“How is a lava lady going to help us with our heist?” I mutter, mainly to myself.
“You never know until you get there and beyond,” the Truthmaster says. “We never know how one thing impacts another until we’re past it and have the privilege of looking back. Keep faith that the goddesses showed you Voldansa and the dragon for a reason.”
Doesn’t he know how little faith I have?